UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering 2015-16 Dean's Report by Michael Marcheschi

I AM #ANTEATERENGINEER

2015-16 DEANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S REPORT

Contents 4 8 18 20 24 26 30 32 36 38 42 44 50 52 54

QUALITY INDICATORS

NOTEWORTHY DEPARTMENT OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING GENOMIC IMPROVISATION DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCE ANTEATER HOMECOMING

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING CONCRETE SOLUTIONS DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE A PIECE OF CAKE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING PUSHING BOUNDARIES ALUMNI AND FRIENDS A LASTING LEGACY A CELEBRATION OF GRADUATE SUCCESS

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT The award-winning Dean’s Report is published annually in early fall by the Samueli School’s Communications Department.

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS: Shelly Nazarenus COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER: Lori Brandt PRINCIPAL WRITER & EDITOR: Anna Lynn Spitzer DESIGNER: Michael Marcheschi, m2design group PUBLISHER: Mike Delaney, Meridian Graphics CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Brian Bell, William Diepenbrock ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Debbie Morales, Jocelyn Lee, Elena Zhukova, Joshua Sudock, Paul R. Kennedy, Daniel A. Anderson

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

Dean From the

In 1965, UC Irvine’s inaugural class was tasked with selecting a mascot. The students challenged the status quo. As fans of Johnny Hart’s comic strip “B.C.,” which featured an anteater who cried “ZOT!,” they proposed the quirky, long-nosed, bushy-tailed mammal. Today Peter the Anteater symbolizes the power of being different and captures a spirit of ingenuity as embodied by the Samueli School experience. As Anteater engineers, we achieve greatness, embrace innovation, learn by doing and break boundaries. This spring, President Barack Obama acknowledged the signiﬁcant achievements of Assistant Professor Alon Gorodetsky, who received the Presidential Early Career Award, the highest honor given by our nation to science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their career. In addition, we have recruited among the world’s best engineers in materials science (Enrique Lavernia and Xiaoqing Pan); water resources (Eﬁ Foufoula-Georgiou); and systems and control (Tryphon Georgiou). As the school continues to hire enterprising researchers, adding to our already well-established faculty ranks, UCI engineering is poised to reach even greater heights.

I AM

#ANTEATERENGINEER

Any university researcher knows that innovation is a crucial component of success in the laboratory. Last fall, we appointed Associate Professor Michelle Khine the inaugural director of faculty innovation, adding to the

school’s myriad support for nurturing creativity. Also, two new world-class centers – Irvine Materials Research Institute, and Institute for Design and Manufacturing Innovation – will provide researchers with the most advanced capabilities on the West Coast. The school’s emphasis on hands-on learning is attracting high-achieving students who want more than just a classroom experience. We are excited about our students who nabbed fifth out of 125 teams in SpaceX’s international Hyperloop Pod Design Competition. UCI HyperXite was the highest-placing team from California and is one of 30 moving forward to the build-test round. Our first year experiential learning program has engaged 745 freshmen since its inception four years ago. More than half of our undergraduates are involved in faculty-mentored research, according to a recent academic program review. In pursuit of novel solutions, Anteater engineers are imagining the impossible. A biomedical engineer collaborated with a neurologist to create a brain-computer interface that enabled a paralyzed man to walk. The breakthrough technology allows the brain to bypass the spinal cord and send a message to the legs telling them to walk. After months of training with a volunteer paraplegic, the team video captured the moment he took his first steps. We enter this fall confident that our distinctive Anteater engineering education will ensure all students have the knowledge, skills and experience to tackle today’s global grand challenges. We can proudly say the value of a UCI Samueli School degree is worth more now than ever before.

Gregory Washington, Ph.D. Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

quality indicators

STUDENTS 642 324

INCOMING FRESHMEN

STUDENT DIVERSITY

ﬁrst-generation college students

31% from low-income families

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

average SAT

826 847 317 51 female undergraduates

underrepresented undergraduates

female graduate students

underrepresented graduate students

2013-14

221 84

2011-12

average GPA

2012-13

336

541 265 92

147 67

1,001

1,042

898

2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16

4.04 39% 1,840

667

Ph.D. M.S. B.S.

682

DEGREES GRANTED

502

3,232

2,872 861

2,777 787

3,119

GRADUATE UNDERGRADUATE

3,318

STUDENT ENROLLMENT

2014-15

2015-16

23% 40% 71% 55% increase over 5 years

increase over 5 years

quality indicators

FACULTY

FACULTY GROWTH

ACHIEVEMENTS

128 118

116

131

117

Fall 2012 Fall 2013 Fall 2014 Fall 2015 Fall 2016

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT ENGINEERING PROGRAM RANKINGS public university graduate program

public university undergraduate program

13 6 21 5 1 2 1 8 6 4

National Academy of Engineering Members

Presidential Young Investigators

NSF CAREER Awards

NIH New Innovators

DARPA Young Faculty Award

Air Force Ofﬁce of Scientiﬁc Research Young Investigator Awards

DOE Early Career Research Program Award

Endowed Chairs

Distinguished Professors

Chancellor’s Professors SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

quality indicators

RESEARCH

EXPENDITURES

TOP RESEARCH AWARDS

2014-15 BY SOURCE

FOR 2014-15

$65.2M

$2,492,000

DOE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY “Thermocomfort Cloth Inspired by Squid Skin” Alon Gorodetsky, assistant professor, chemical engineering and materials science

FEDERAL

$43.9M INDUSTRY

$12.3M $4.5M

$4.5M

STATE OTHER

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER INVENTION DISCLOSURE PATENTS ISSUED LICENSING ACTIVITY

42 34

32 23

16 3

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

$1,800,000

$1,499,386

CALIFORNIA ENERGY COMMISSION “Pollution Control and Power Generation for Low Quality Renewable Fuel Streams” Vince McDonell, adjunct professor and associate director, Advanced Power & Energy Program

$1,297,672

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION “Scalable Nanomanufacturing of Metasurfaces & Plasmonic Opto-Mechanical Systems” Regina Ragan, associate professor, chemical engineering and materials science

2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 6

W.M. KECK FOUNDATION “Optical Frequency Magnetic Nanoprobes” Filippo Capolino, associate professor, electrical engineering and computer science

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION “Innovate from the Start: Engaging Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduates” Gregory Washington, Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering

51 36

$2,000,000

$1,199,525

DOE NATIONAL ENERGY TECHNOLOGY LAB “Development and Demonstration of a Generic Microgrid Controller” Scott Samuelsen, professor emeritus and director, Advanced Power & Energy Program

quality indicators

PARTNERS DONOR SUPPORT

$15M*

CASH DONATIONS RECEIVED

* includes $9.5M Opus Foundation Gift

$5.1M

$5.2M

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

GIFT SOURCE

$7.2M

$7.7M

2014-15

2015-16

GIFT PURPOSE

FOR 2015-16

$7.7M $4,630,705 $2,640,341 $274,066 $155,536 $39,323

FOUNDATIONS CORPORATIONS OTHER ORGANIZATIONS INDIVIDUALS ALUMNI

$7.7M $3,009,241 $2,369,625 $1,500,000 $849,005 $12,100

DEPARTMENT AND PROGRAM SUPPORT RESEARCH AND INSTRUCTION ENDOWED CHAIRS STUDENT SUPPORT EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING â&#x20AC;¢ UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

FIRST PLACE FINISH Young chemical engineers sweep Chem-E Car regionals

noteworthy

STUDENTS Elias Massoud, a civil and environmental engineering doctoral student, earns

a Science Graduate Student Researcher Fellowship from the U.S.

Department of Energy. The fellowship encompasses a paid internship at the Los

Alamos National Laboratory, where Massoud will work on testing different aspects of Earth’s systems in LANL’s Vegetation Dynamics Research Lab.

A chemical typically used in crime scene investigations helped UCI students sweep the western regional Chem-E Car competition. The annual American Institute of Chemical Engineers competition tasks students to design and build a car powered by chemical energy.

level, an Arduino program triggers the car’s stopping mechanism.

UCI’s team beat 13 other schools, taking ﬁrst place in both the on-track and poster presentation events.

The required distance for this year’s competition was 18 meters. UCI’s car stopped successfully at 18.04 meters – just 4 centimeters off the mark – besting the secondplace team’s effort by more than a foot.

Instead of revamping last year’s car, the team started anew. They scratched the idea of battery power, choosing instead to use a fuel cell. They tossed their old stopping mechanism, replacing it with a novel Luminol-bleach reaction. Luminol, used to identify blood and other crime scene evidence, glows brightly when it’s oxidized by bleach. When a sensor detects that the light from the reaction has reached a certain

For the contest, the vehicle, no larger than 30 by 40 centimeters, must safely carry a speciﬁed load over a given distance in two minutes, and stop autonomously using only a chemical reaction.

“I’m very proud of the team for representing our school and working hard together,” says Hung Nguyen, assistant professor and the team’s faculty adviser. “They worked late in the evening and many weekends to come up with a winning design, which reflects their tremendous tenacity and amazing problem-solving skills.”

The Samueli School’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials

Science receives a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education for Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need (GAANN). With

UCI matching funds, the total comes to $1.1 million, enough to support seven graduate fellows for three years each. With their revamped Chem-E Car, UCI team rolls to victory in the regional

American Institute of Chemical Engineers contest.

UCI’s chapter of the National Achievement Rewards for College Scientists

Foundation names Dominique Ingato a 2015-17 UCI ARCS Scholar. A

doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Ingato researches nanotheranostics – the use of nanotechnology to integrate diagnostic and therapeutic functions into one system.

UC’s Ofﬁce of the President names Laura Rood a 2015-16 Global Food Initiative Fellow. An undergraduate chemical engineering student, Rood works to inform the campus community about sustainable food choices, zero-waste dining facilities and other goals related to the UC Global Food Initiative. Environmental engineering graduate student Daniel Howard wins MIT’s Energy

Solutions for Latin America contest, hosted by MIT’s Center for Collective

Intelligence. Howard’s project analyzes which mix of energy sources provides the lowest total commercial, environmental and health costs for society.

UC’s Ofﬁce of the President names Kimberly Duong a 2015-16 Carbon Neutrality Fellow. A civil and environmental engineering graduate student, Duong studies how external factors, such as conservation campaigns and technological innovation, influence urban water consumption. Her fellowship project involves creating a fall quarter Student Congress to help update UCI’s Climate Action Plan.

The UCI Alumni Association selects four graduating engineering students for the Chancellor’s Award of Distinction: Gabrielle Cobos (mechanical

engineering), Ahmed Farhat (premed/biomedical engineering), Katherine Lai

(chemical engineering) and Katherine Tran (computer science engineering). These students represent exceptional academic achievement and a commitment to cuttingedge research, leadership and service to UCI.

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

HYPERXITED TO COMPETE Dat Huynh wins an Undergraduate Student Award from the Sigma Gamma Tau National Aerospace Engineering Honor Society in recognition of his exceptional academic and technical achievement. A mechanical and aerospace engineering undergraduate, Huynh is president of UCI’s chapter of the honor society

Team designs top-flight high-speed transportation pod

and manager of UCI’s Human Powered Airplane project. Samueli School biomedical engineering students Nicole Mendoza and Kimberly

Veliz appear on “America’s Greatest Makers” reality TV show to pitch Slapband, their activity-tracker device that measures blood pressure. They were one of 24 initial teams selected by the show to present their project to a panel of four celebrity judges, and one of only 15 teams to move through to the second round. Biomedical engineering graduate student Jessica Hsieh wins third place in the

local Grad Slam competition, part of a UC contest to showcase the best three-minute

research presentations by graduate scholars. Hsieh seeks to change the body’s natural immune response to foreign materials such as implants or stents. UCI’s Design/Build/Fly team places third out of 80 in the AIAA Foundation’s

annual competition held in Wichita, Kan. UCI’s 34-member team was among

650 students representing 68 colleges on four continents to participate in the 20th competition, an opportunity for students to design and build an unmanned, electricpowered, radio-controlled aircraft that can perform speciﬁc missions. The highest-placing team from California, UCI’s HyperXite nabs ﬁfth in the international Hyperloop Pod Design Competition.

UCI’s HyperXite team beat out more than 100 others to place fifth in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design contest at Texas A&M University. The Hyperloop is a concept first proposed by Elon Musk to design and build extreme high-speed, energy-efficient transportation. More than 1,000 students from 20 countries competed in the event. HyperXite is one of 30 teams moving forward to the build-test round of the competition. UCI’s pod is designed to accelerate from 0 to 219 mph in just five seconds. Similar to a hovercraft, the pod will float on a thin film of air using a precision levitation system developed specifically for this application. Its primary braking system uses electromagnets that can stop the pod safely without making contact with the rail. Also, composite materials are integrated into many aspects of the design to keep the pod’s weight down. And finally, to ensure safety, the pod’s braking, navigation, controls and levitation systems are all fault-tolerant or redundant, meaning that if any one of the systems experiences a failure, there is a backup approach that would maintain functionality of the pod. Roger Rangel, HyperXite adviser and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, traveled with the team to Texas. “I was very proud of our students and their professionalism. Their understanding of the requirements and attention to detail paid off.”

The National Science Foundation awards Graduate Research Fellowships to two engineering students: Louai Labanieh and Melissa Thone. A biomedical

engineer, Labanieh is developing rapid diagnostic tests that can identify antibioticresistant bacteria. Thone, a chemical and biochemical engineer, is researching the use of extracellular vesicles as therapeutic and diagnostic (nanotheranostic) platforms for cancer therapy. The Department of Defense awards a National Defense Science and Engineering

Graduate Fellowship to David Kok, a doctoral student in materials science and

engineering. Kok’s research involves developing multiphase oxide ceramics to be used as safer and more efﬁcient nuclear fuel. Kok is a former Marine and community college student who participated in UCI’s STEM Summer Bridge program.

UCI’s Graduate Division names doctoral candidates Julius Edson (chemical

engineering and materials science) and Elena Liang (biomedical engineering)

2016 Public Impact Distinguished Fellows. Both receive $10,000 in support of their work. Edson studies ways to combat drug-resistant microbes, and Liang is designing an artiﬁcial cornea that uses nanotopography to control cell adhesion. SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

WHITE HOUSE RECOGNITION Materials scientist awarded highest honor for early career breakthroughs His work includes developing bioinspired camouflage coatings, but Alon Gorodetsky was more than happy to be in full view at the White House last spring. The chemical engineering and materials science assistant professor was one of just 105 researchers nationally named by President Barack Obama as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The award, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on early-stage science and engineering professionals, comes with a $1 million award from the Air Force Ofﬁce of Scientiﬁc Research. Gorodetsky flew to Washington, D.C., in May to accept his award. While in Washington, he also participated in The Science Coalition Roundtable, a discussion for journalists with the scientists and engineers who won the prestigious award. Gorodetsky seeks to understand and emulate the adaptive properties of squid skin, using them to develop futuristic materials, including infrared stealth camouflage coatings for military applications, bioelectronics devices that can interface with living systems and new fabrics that allow wearers to regulate their own body temperature. “I am humbled by this honor and thrilled with the award,” he said. “The money will let my group take some of its work in exciting and risky new directions.”

noteworthy

FACULTY Biomedical engineering Professor Michelle Khine is appointed the Samueli School’s

inaugural director of faculty innovation. She serves as the school’s liaison to

UCI’s Institute for Innovation, an interdisciplinary center focused on creating realworld applications for academic inquiry. Electrical engineer Syed Ali Jafar and biomedical engineer Weian Zhao are

recognized by their UCI peers with Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty

Awards. Jafar, who has contributed to an improved understanding of wireless

network capacity, receives the 2015-16 Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Research, while Zhao, who develops novel miniaturized devices for disease diagnosis and monitoring, is awarded the Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Research. Innovative researcher Alon Gorodetsky gains attention and accolades from President Barack Obama for his early career success. The American Heart Association awards a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to biomedical engineering researcher Hamed Alavi to support his hybrid tissue-engineered heart valve research. Alavi’s new valve aims to combine a patient’s own cells with a metal alloy mesh, providing potentially self-regenerative function with better durability. Biomedical engineer Bruce Tromberg, director of the Beckman Laser Institute,

is elected a 2016 Fellow of The Optical Society, an international association of optics and photonics scientists, engineers and business leaders. Tromberg is

recognized for his advocacy and leadership of the biophotonics community and for pioneering development and clinical application of light imaging.

Ben Dolan is named a Distinguished INnovator Operator (DINO) by the Additive Manufacturing Users Group. The director of design engineering research projects, Dolan is recognized for his 10 years of dedication to improving education in the additive manufacturing industry and for helping spread global awareness of the ﬁeld. The American Epilepsy Society honors biomedical engineer Beth Lopour

with its Junior Investigator Award. Lopour uses computational techniques to

study electrical signals recorded from the brains of people with epilepsy in an effort to improve treatment and outcomes for those with the disease. Chemical engineering and materials science Assistant Professor Hung D. Nguyen receives the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. Nguyen uses computer simulation to design smart nanomaterials that can change their shape and structure in response to environmental stimuli.

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

HYDROLOGIC HAT TRICK Nancy DaSilva, chemical engineering & materials science professor, is named

the engineering school’s Dean’s Honoree for Excellence in Undergraduate

Teaching. DaSilva, who holds a joint appointment in biomedical engineering,

focuses her research on molecular biotechnology, speciﬁcally molecular level design,

Water and drought researcher shares his expertise

application and analysis of industrial yeasts.

Andrei Shkel is elected to a two-year term on the Executive Committee of the IEEE Sensors Council. The professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, and biomedical engineering is vice president for technical activities. Materials scientist Julie Schoenung, who studies nanostructured and ultraﬁnegrained materials, green materials and green engineering design, is awarded the

2016 Acta Materialia Holloman Award for Materials & Society. The honor recognizes demonstrated leadership in promoting an understanding of the interactions between materials technology and societal interests, as well as contributions to materials technology that have had a major impact on society.

Satya Atluri and Syed Ali Jafar are among the top 1 percent of scientiﬁc researchers in the world, according to the 2015 Highly Cited Researchers list produced by Thomson Reuters. Atluri, professor emeritus, invented the so-called “meshless method” that has aided the design of safer materials for aircraft. Electrical engineering professor Jafar researches the fundamental performance limits of wireless network capacity.

Amir AghaKouchak is recognized for his services as an outstanding civil engineer, educator, mentor and researcher by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Orange County Branch, with its Outstanding ASCE Faculty Advisor award. AghaKouchak is called on often for his water expertise. Distinguished Professor Soroosh Sorooshian is appointed chair of the

Rosenberg International Forum through June 2022. Sorooshian will organize a series of high-level conferences aimed at reducing conflict in water-resource management. Electrical engineer Jean-Luc Gaudiot is voted 2016 president-elect of the IEEE Computer Society, an international organization dedicated to all aspects of modern computing technology. A longtime IEEE member, he most recently served as vice

Amir AghaKouchak scored the unique feat last summer of having his work featured in three leading scientiﬁc journals – Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Science – within two weeks. In Nature, the civil and environmental engineer and his colleagues published an article urging that lessons learned from California’s drought be used to manage water supplies in a warmer, more populated world. “Overuse and obsolete management of scarce water resources are exacerbating the current drought’s impacts,” the team wrote. “We call for more studies and legislative consideration of the human impacts on water stress caused by urbanization, greenhouse-gas emissions and food and energy production, as well as for policy and management practices more suitable to prosperous economies and developed water systems.” In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, AghaKouchak and a graduate student analyzed climate data from the past 50 years and concluded that while the occurrence of droughts has remained stable, there has been a dramatic increase in drought and heat waves happening simultaneously. And AghaKouchak sent a letter to Science warning that drought threatens California’s levees. “California’s drought is yet another stress that poses a great risk to an already endangered levee system. At this time, 55 percent of California’s levee systems are rated as ‘high hazard,’ meaning they are in danger of failing if a flood or earthquake occurs,” he wrote. “The impacts of drought and climate change are of such importance to Californians and people around the world. I hope these writings will encourage the scientiﬁc community and the broader public to take these issues seriously.”

president of the publications board.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

BAD VIBRATIONS Research team discovers security breach in 3-D printing process

noteworthy

RESEARCH Engineering faculty Nader Bagherzadeh, Ozdal Boyraz and Mikael Nilsson are teaming with a UCI physics professor to investigate the effects of radiation on a new type of memory technology. The three-year project has received more than

$1 million in funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Researchers in the lab of computer science engineer Mohammad Al Faruque, director of UCI’s Advanced Integrated Cyber-Physical Systems Lab, stumbled upon something unexpected last year. While working to better understand the relationship between information and energy flows, they realized that audible emissions produced by 3-D printers can carry information about the exact movements of the printer’s nozzle, and those signals can be picked up by ordinary smartphones. The recordings can be used to reverse-engineer the objects being printed, presenting a new kind of cybersecurity risk. Al Faruque’s team achieved nearly 90 percent accuracy using the sound copying process to duplicate a key-shaped object in the lab. They presented their results at April’s International Conference on CyberPhysical Systems in Vienna. “In many manufacturing plants, people who work on a shift basis don’t get monitored for their smartphones,” Al Faruque said. “If process and product information is stolen during the prototyping phases, companies stand to incur large ﬁnancial losses.” Since today’s smartphones have sensors that can capture a range of analog emissions, Al Faruque thinks engineers should try to jam those acoustic signals, perhaps with white-noise devices or by deploying algorithmic solutions. At a minimum, he said, people should be prevented from carrying smartphones near the rapid prototyping areas when sensitive objects are being printed. The study was funded by a cyber-physical systems research grant from the National Science Foundation.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, a research team led by

Mohammad Al Faruque ﬁnds 3-D machine sounds enable reverse engineering of source code.

Donald Dabdub, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is collaborating with a UCI chemistry professor to determine how to protect the air we breathe from the impacts of climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awards more than $700,000 to the team to study the effects of ammonia and rising global temperatures on secondary organic aerosol formation. Biomedical engineering Professor Zhongping Chen has been awarded a four-

year grant from the National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, in

support of his project to develop and characterize novel tools for imaging the elastic properties of the retina under prosthetic electrical stimulation. Project scientist Lawrence Kulinsky chairs the 2016 International

Conference on Micromanufacturing, marking the ﬁrst time the event is held in California. The four-day conference brings together 128 micromanufacturing devotees from 15 countries throughout the world to hear three keynote speakers and more than 100 technical talks.

Professor Emeritus Scott Samuelsen and Distinguished Professor Soroosh Sorooshian lead UCI’s participation in a ﬁve-year, multimillion-dollar international water-energy research consortium. The Clean Energy Research Center for Water Energy Technologies is partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic, along with a UCI neurologist, creates a novel

brain-computer interface that allows a paraplegic man to walk for the ﬁrst time

without relying on manually controlled robotic limbs. Study results appear in the openaccess Journal of NeuroEngineering & Rehabilitation. Research led by biomedical engineer Gregory Brewer indicates that chemical

changes in brain cells caused by disturbances in the body’s day-night cycle may be a key underlying cause of the learning and memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Study results appear online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

HOT TOPIC Antibacterial nanopillars, found on cicada and dragonfly wings to impale and kill bacterial cells, are replicated by materials scientist Albert Yee and his research team on synthetic polymers that could be used in artiﬁcial corneas and other medical devices. Yee’s graduate students – Rachel Rosenzweig, Elena Liang, Mary

Nora Dickson and Emma Mah – enter the research in the MIT Convergence Idea Challenge, beating out 22 other teams to win the ﬁrst-place prize of $3,000, along with the $1,000 Community Choice Award. Biomedical engineering doctoral alumna Claire Robertson is one of ﬁve national

recipients of the 2015 For Women in Science Fellowship from L’oreal USA. Robertson, a postdoctoral scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, seeks to better understand how the normal environment in the breast acts to suppress tumor formation through biophysical mechanisms. Mechanical and aerospace engineering Distinguished Professor Said Elghobashi,

a National Academy of Engineering member, receives the Senior Award at the

9th International Conference on Multiphase Flows. Elghobashi has made

pioneering contributions to computational fluid dynamics over the course of his more than four-decade career. Biomedical engineering Associate Professor Arash Kheradvar receives a two-

year $150,000 Innovative Research Grant from the American Heart Association for his ultrasound-guided delivery system for transcatheter heart valve replacement. Electrical engineer Mohammad Al Faruque and graduate student Korosh Vatanparvar receive Best Paper honors at the IEEE/ACM Design Automation and Test in Europe conference. Al Faruque is among a select group of researchers who have received best paper awards at the top three CAD conferences worldwide: DATE (2016), Design Automation Conference (DAC 2015) and International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD 2009).

Tiny devices deliver big returns on keeping electronic devices cool Mechanical engineer Yoonjin Won is looking for new ways to dissipate heat in power-hungry computers and other electronic devices. “If there’s power, there’s heat, which causes a performance problem in high-tech devices,” she says. Air cooling – the equivalent of internal fans – is the current choice for cooling technology in computer components, but Won is thinking small – very, very small. She is looking at nanomaterial-embedded microfluidics carrying liquids to do the job instead. Microfluidic devices, tiny machines that transport fluids through submillimeter-sized tubes, can circulate cooling liquid around the electronics’ microchips. The tiny devices, however, would have nanomaterials built into their miniscule water channels, changing their properties and allowing for precise regulation of water absorption, repellence, boiling, condensation and evaporation. Specifically, Won is investigating a surface coating made of porous copper nanomaterial applied in layers, which can be arranged to control the material’s ability to absorb or repel water, and enabling fluid to be more efficiently cycled throughout the system to remove heat. “Recent research has shown that the basic physics of heat transfer is altered using nanoscale features, with potentially huge advances in efficiency,” she says. “By engineering nanomaterials into microfluidic devices, we can have a high level of control over thermal transport parameters.”

Assistant Professor Yoonjin Won and her team are combining microfluidics and recent advances in nanomaterials engineering to improve the cooling of high-powered electronic devices, furthering work done for the U.S. Department of Defense and

National Science Foundation.

Postdoctoral scholar Rishi Jajoo is awarded a three-year Jane Cofﬁn Childs

Memorial Fund for Medical Research postdoctoral fellowship. The funds will help him in his work re-engineering the mitochondrial genetic code to produce new proteins with functions not found in nature, which could be used as novel therapeutics, or for fuels or biomaterials.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

ROBOTS TO THE RESCUE Competition offers hands-on STEM learning experience

noteworthy

PARTNERS ASPIRE and INSPIRE, two new summer programs for high school and community

college students, welcome 30 students from all over California. Students from

underserved communities work in teams to design and build projects related to the Internet of Things during a two-week experience that leverages the facilities and faculty of the Samueli School of Engineering and the Bren School of Information and

A half dozen Orange County colleges and high schools competed in the 2016 UCI Rescue Robotics Invitational, a competition that provides STEM education in a hands-on, classroom and project-based learning environment. The challenge is to create robotic systems, either groundbased or aerial, that could traverse a square field autonomously and detect “disaster victims” – in this case, 5-gallon orange buckets from the local home improvement store. With earthquakes, wildfires and mudslides, “the challenge makes sense, here, in Orange County. When we have a disaster, the standard way of searching for victims is to line up everyone you can get in a row and start moving forward one step at a time,” says faculty adviser Michael McCarthy, professor of mechanical & aerospace engineering. “If we could have these simple drones that go out and identify where victims are located, it could be faster and much more practical.” He and his collaborators established the competition with three main requirements: The robots had to function outdoors, compensating for wind, different lighting conditions and varying terrain. They had to operate with multiple units in the field at the same time. And, most importantly, they had to work without being controlled remotely by humans. When it was over, bragging rights went to a team from Garden Grove’s Santiago High School that fielded an aerial vehicle. Laguna Hills High School came in second with a quadcopter system, and UCI’s ground robot took third place. The invitational, in its second year, was coordinated by UCI and Vital Link, an organization that helps local youth find rewarding educational and career opportunities.

Computer Sciences.

Orange County college and high school students converge on the Samueli

School campus for the 2016 UCI Rescue Robotics Invitational.

Six studious high schoolers from St. Margaret’s Episcopal School spend more than half their summer break as interns immersed in engineering research at the Samueli School. Now in its 11th year, the program matches high-potential students with a faculty member and research area based on their interests, with the aim of inspiring enthusiasm for STEM ﬁelds. A dozen international engineering students participate in a 10-week

accelerated summer session through the Saudi Arabia International Program.

The collaboration between Sattam bin Abdulaziz University and the Samueli School provides extensive engineering and English training for students interested in pursuing an advanced career in technical areas.

More than 400 alumni, faculty, donors and industry partners turn out for the school’s

2015 Hall of Fame and 50th Anniversary Celebration. Fifty-four alumni are honored for their accomplishments with induction into the inaugural Hall of Fame for the Samueli School and the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences.

Team Orange County, led by UCI, along with Chapman University, Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College, earns second place in the engineering contest at the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2015. Jurors praised the team’s net-zero-energy Casa del Sol home as “the most innovative in the entire competition.” The National Science Foundation awards a three-year, $600,000 grant to UCI to help community college teachers get their students more interested and involved in STEM-related research. Civil and environmental engineering Professor Stanley Grant partnered with Orange County Watersheds to create ROCCT, a sixweek summer session for local community college teachers to hone their research skills through projects aimed at ﬁghting drought.

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

FUTURE ENGINEERS Ofﬁcials from China’s Dalian University of Technology meet and sign a Letter

of Intent with UCI Provost Enrique Lavernia and Samueli School Dean Gregory

Washington to establish a joint educational and research institute. The effort creates a formal exchange program for faculty and students between the two universities. UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman, along with four deans and a group of faculty members, participates in the fourth installment of an annual UCI/Tel Aviv

University workshop series dedicated to increasing and improving the higher education of engineers and scientists. Held in Israel this past year, the conference focused on how IoT’s interfacing technologies will transform innovation over the next decade.

Elementary school children from Long Beach, Calif. take a ﬁeld trip to UCI for some engineering fun and learning. The Broadcom Foundation establishes a fellowship program for Samueli School graduate students studying integrated circuits and embedded systems design. With $500,000, the new fellowship program will provide annual support for

10 engineering graduate students. The Samueli School of Engineering and the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences celebrate Ingenuity 2016 to recognize the top student innovations from both schools. The event includes a student technology showcase, a keynote speech by Raspberry Pi founder Eban Upton, and recognition of Broadcom Foundation President Paula Golden for her contributions to the engineering school. For the third consecutive year, the Beall and Butterworth engineering and computer sciences design competitions encourage students to create new technologies or design solutions with commercialization potential. Student teams present their projects to a panel of judges and vie for prize money.

Third graders revel in robots during field trip About 80 third graders ventured from their Long Beach neighborhoods for a half-day field trip at the Samueli School of Engineering, where the youngsters learned all about making robots. Accompanied by four teachers and half a dozen parent chaperones, the elementary school children traveled by bus to UCI, went on a walking tour of the campus, then listened to a 30-minute lecture about robots from their host, Professor David Reinkensmeyer. Afterward they were able to see firsthand what engineering students do as they learned about and observed the real thing from Anteater engineers. The students broke into groups and rotated through four stations. They built tiny strider robots that traveled down an aluminum foil batterycharged track. In the Biorobotics lab, they played with the MusicGlove and a robotic arm that helps stroke patients recover movement. They visited the iMove lab in Calit2, where they learned about spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation with lever-actuated resonance assistance. And, they imagined their own robot on paper with the help of engineering students. “This is just awesome,” said Diana Stewart, one of the teachers whose school serves a high percentage of low-income families. “I can talk about it, we can open a book, but there is no greater way to inspire these kids in science and engineering than to expose them to the real thing. It’s a great appetizer for the STEM activities they’ll participate in later, during 5th grade.”

Entrepreneurial-minded engineering students fare well in the 2016 Paul Merage School Business Plan Competition. Four engineering teams place among the top 12, including EmbryLux, ﬁrst place winner in two categories for its device, which screens embryos before in vitro fertilization implantation to predict chance of successful birth.

Laser Associated Sciences, a medical device company co-founded by biomedical engineering doctoral alumni Sean White and Bruce Yang, wins $50,000 as one of three runners-up in a UC-wide entrepreneurial competition in San Francisco.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR

David Reinkensmeyer knew at 8 years old that he wanted to be an inventor. His third grade teacher in Wichita, Kansas, had inspired him with an invention contest. “She was excellent at stimulating creativity. I made a marble game and I loved the process,” says the UCI professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, anatomy and neurobiology, biomedical engineering, and physical medicine and rehabilitation. He continued creating in high school: board games, computer games, mechanical toys, a robot dog. The Samueli School’s 2016 Innovator of the Year values lateral thinking. He writes poetry and takes photographs; he also hikes and revels in nature, or “the wild” as he likes to call it.

8 16

patents secured

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

patents pending

Reinkensmeyer puts his fertile imagination to daily use in his Biorobotics Laboratory, where his team develops robotic and mechatronic devices that enhance human movement, motor learning and rehabilitation. Over 18 years, his inventions have helped thousands of people recover arm and hand movement after a stroke or spinal cord injury. Reinkensmeyer figures he’s developed 25 to 30 devices during his UCI career. He has tried to commercialize five, with two spinning off into successful companies. A recent winner of the UCI Academic Senate’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Research, Reinkensmeyer shares his enthusiasm for robots with students, mentoring high schoolers during the summer and teaching a popular undergraduate lab in mechanical systems each spring in which the final project is the design, testing and building of a robotic device.

SBIR grants

commercialized robotic devices:

Armeospring & MusicGlove

leadership

COUNCIL The Samueli School of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Council is a distinguished group of thought leaders whose industry expertise, community engagement and entrepreneurial endeavors support, inspire and promote the school’s vision. Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos Broadcom Ltd.

Bill Carpou OCTANe

Tom Ambrose Emulex Corp.

Ray Chan K5 Launch

James Aralis Microsemi Corp.

Dan Cregg Insteon

Don R. Beall Rockwell

Mark T. Czaja Parker Hanniﬁn Corp.

Brian R. Bennett Intel Corp.

Feyzi Fatehi Corent Technology, Inc.

Gregory N. Brand ’77 Electrical Engineering DRS Defense Solutions

Bruce Feuchter Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth

Roger Brum Meggitt Defense Systems, Inc.

Peter M. Fiacco Executive Technical Consulting

William C. Cain Western Digital Corp.

Dominic Gallello MSC Software

Nabeel Gareeb The Gareeb Family Foundation Robert Grant ALPHAEON Corp. Judy Greenspon NPI Services, Inc. Jai Hakhu Horiba International Corp. Raouf Y. Halim Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. Bernard Harguindeguy ’81 Electrical Engineering Atlantis Computing, Inc. J.D. Harriman Arent Fox Michel R. Kamel MelRok, LLC Scott Kitcher Clean Tech OC Robert A. Kleist Printronix, Inc. Leo G. LaForge Rockwell Collins

William J. Link Versant Ventures

Fred Schreiner Thales Avionics, Inc.

Ivan Madera MORF3D

Amit Shah Artiman Ventures

James Mulato Astronics Test Systems

Paul N. Singarella Latham & Watkins, LLP

Michael A. Mussallem Edwards Lifesciences Corp.

Gerald R. Solomon Samueli Foundation

Stacey Nicholas Opus Foundation

James P. Spoto Sunrise Micro Devices, Inc.

Daryl G. Pelc The Boeing Company

Richard Sudek UCI Applied Innovation

Robert J. Phillippy Newport Corp.

Landon Taylor Base 11

Jane E. Rady Abbott Medical Optics, Inc.

Vincent L. Thomas Rockwell Collins

Rod Robinson Frito-Lay North America

John J. Tracy Ph.D. ‘87 Engineering The Boeing Company

Leila Rohani ‘85 Electrical Engineering Paciﬁc Mercantile Bank

Derrick Waters UPS

Stanton J. Rowe Edwards Lifesciences Corp.

James Watson CMTC

Henry Samueli Broadcom Ltd.

Larry Williams ANSYS Ruben Zadoyan Newport Corp.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING The growth of biomedical engineering in the Samueli School has been rapid. The department merges UCI’s strengths in medicine, biological sciences and engineering. BME faculty are competitive in garnering extramural grants, with expenditures topping $30M on an annual basis. Strong ties with many of Orange County’s more than 300 biomedical device and biotech companies provide students and faculty with distinct opportunities to solve contemporary medical challenges.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

FOUNDED

2002

112

M.S., Ph.D. degrees Biomedical Engineering

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

413 2015 - 16

B.S. degrees Biomedical Engineering Biomedical Engineering: Premedical

“An Anteater Engineer has many opportunities to grow in every aspect; it can be challenging and bittersweet.” Irene Beltran, ‘17

B.S. Biomedical Engineering

I AM

#ANTEATERENGINEER

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

2015 - 16

“Since so much is given and entrusted to us Anteaters, let us give back to society by engineering a better future for the next generation!” Abraham “Abe” Lee, Ph.D. William J. Link Professor and Department Chair

FACULTY & RECOGNITION

full-time

5 1 8 1

NIH New Innovator Awards DARPA Young Faculty Award AIMBE Fellows NIH T32 Award

8 2 NIH P41 Centers

world-class centers, including 1 NSF I/UCRC

affiliated

2 2 1

RESEARCH & EXPENDITURES

NSF CAREER Awards Endowed Chairs

research thrusts

Biomedical Computational Technologies Biomedical Nanoscale Systems Biomolecular/ Genetic Engineering

NSF IGERT Award

Biophotonics Cardiovascular Neuroengineering Tissue Engineering

2014-15 research expenditures

$34.2M

“The dividends of our growing engineering program are not only paid to past alumni, but paid forward to future generations of Anteater Engineers.”

“It means having an amazing undergraduate education and experience.”

“Striving for the best and having the confidence to be a critical thinker and problem solver.”

Michael Klopfer, ’08, ‘15

Jocelynda Salvador, ‘16

Chun (Jerry) Chen, ‘18

B.S., Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering

B.S. Biomedical Engineering

B.S. Biomedical Engineering: Premedical

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

MUSICIAN-TURNEDBIOENGINEER STRIVES FOR ON-DEMAND EVOLUTION

GENOMIC

IMPROV

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

ISATION Brian Bell

Steve Zylius

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

In the right hands, the 88 keys on a piano offer unlimited creative possibilities. To a talented biomedical engineer, the molecules of the human genome likewise enable compositions of enormous complexity and inventiveness. UCI’s Chang Liu, who has shown brilliance in both music and genetic engineering, thinks he has found his muse in the cells of living organisms. “Much of what’s most exciting in science right now is in biology,” says Liu, an assistant professor. “It’s an unconquered frontier.”

building with six Ph.D. students, three postdoctoral scholars, two lab technicians and two undergraduates.

For Liu, the fascination comes from two angles: exploring unknown boundaries in life science, and discovering how to use biological materials to build new structures on the molecular and genetic scales. It’s this goal of learning how cells, DNA and RNA, enzymes, amino acids and proteins can be taken apart and reassembled like a gooey erector set that has earned him a place at the Samueli School of Engineering.

The Tucson, Ariz., native earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Harvard University, but science wasn’t the main reason he moved from the Southwest to Cambridge, Mass.

“I came here initially through a search by UCI’s multidisciplinary Center for Complex Biological Systems,” Liu says. “I was matched with the Samueli School because of my work in genetics, which many consider to be a frontier in engineering.” He now runs a lab in UCI’s Natural Sciences II

“I was serious about music and concert piano performance at the time, and I had an audition with a very famous pianist, musicologist and music theorist at Harvard,” says Liu, who was raised in a family of scientists and amateur musicians. “He only mentors two or three students at a time, and he offered to take me on if I did my undergrad degree there.” In addition to music, Liu delved deeply into chemistry and physics. He went on to receive a doctorate in the former from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,

Calif. “This period of time was pivotal for me,” he says, “because it showed me the importance of understanding how chemistry is done in the service of answering biological questions.” Now Liu and his lab mates are attempting to engineer cells that have new capabilities using a novel approach to biological research known as directed evolution, a method used in protein engineering that mimics the process of natural selection to evolve proteins or nucleic acids toward a user-deﬁned goal. “The larger theme of our lab is trying to engineer genetic systems that can process and transfer information,” he says. While the role of DNA is to store and propagate information, it doesn’t actually “go around performing functions at the cellular level,” he notes. Instead, instructions are transcribed from DNA to RNA and translated

“A LOT OF OUR PROJECTS ARE FIGURING OUT HOW TO EXPERIMENT ON CELLS AT RATES NECESSARY TO SEE EVOLUTION OCCUR IN THE TIME SCALES OF A LABORATORY RATHER THAN IN THE NATURAL BIOLOGICAL WORLD.”

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

to proteins, which are the more functional molecules. Liu and his colleagues are working to get to the bottom of this process to see if they can evolve the genome at will to perform such desired actions as attacking diseased cells and boosting healthy ones. Genetics researchers tend to develop a certain level of respect and admiration for this system that has taken eons to evolve to what it is today. Liu says the genome is based on a set of inert chemicals that sorted themselves out billions of years ago, so it’s not possible to just go in and rearrange molecules. If a reactive chemical were introduced into the genetic code, “cross talk” would cause the cell to die. Liu’s lab has improvised a way around this problem by developing a technique called orthogonal DNA replication, in which the host’s genetic code is augmented by an engineered one inserted within the same cell. “We’re basically installing reactive and chemically privileged groups into the genetic code that are not normally there so that we can make proteins that are better therapeutics,” Liu says. In other words, his team has learned how to create cells with an auxiliary replication system, an enzyme that works with a piece of DNA that’s living in the same cell but acting

independently of that cell’s genome. This allows Liu and his colleagues to experiment on genes at very rapid rates in the lab – the goal being to make cells that accomplish beneﬁcial tasks. “A lot of our projects are ﬁguring out how to experiment on cells at rates necessary to see evolution occur in the time scales of a laboratory rather than in the natural biological world,” he says. These efforts have drawn the attention of leaders in this area of research beyond UCI. Liu has received a number of recent awards in support of his work: a Sloan Research Fellowship, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award and DuPont Young Professor Award as well as major grants from the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

I AM “ #ANTEATERENGINEER

I joined UCI’s biomedical engineering department because of its extraordinary level of energy and enthusiasm for new ideas. We fuel each other.

”

“Chang Liu’s work will play a major role as the ﬁeld moves from gene editing to actually composing new genes. Directed evolution is the composer’s muse and editor combined,” says Frances Arnold, the Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering & Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. “Chang has an audacious and creative vision tempered by reality and an engineer’s ability to get things done.”

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING & MATERIALS SCIENCE The department seeks to create and apply new knowledge in chemical engineering and materials science to meet national and global needs in areas of biotechnology, healthcare, energy and the environment. ChEMS provides personalized educational experiences, high-level training and a strong support network for achieving career goals. The department beneﬁts from national funding agency support and partnerships with surrounding hightech industry, offering opportunities for collaboration, internships and job placement.

2002

I AM

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

161

2015 - 16

M.S., Ph.D. degrees Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Materials Science and Engineering

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

386 2015 - 16

B.S. degrees Chemical Engineering Materials Science Engineering

“What makes us Anteater Engineers so unique is our intrinsic nature to be rebels.”

“Being an Anteater Engineer means having the pleasure to educate, mentor and provide opportunities for the next generation of engineering leaders.”

Janine Chua, ‘16

Vasan Venugopalan, Sc.D.

M.S. Chemical Engineering

#ANTEATERENGINEER

GRADUATE STUDENTS

FOUNDED

Department Chair

FACULTY & RECOGNITION

full-time

2 5 1 1

National Academy of Engineering Members NSF CAREER Awards Presidential Young Investigator Award Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

“The guidance and mentorship I received from the faculty encouraged me to reach my full potential and to go where my passion lies.” Lily Wu, ’01, ‘07

B.S. Chemical Engineering, Ph.D. Materials & Manufacturing Technology

affiliated

2 1 2

RESEARCH & EXPENDITURES

world-class centers

research thrusts

Endowed Chairs

Biomolecular Engineering & Biomaterials Energy & Sustainability

Microstructured Materials Nanotechnology & Nanoengineering

Environment Distinguished Professor Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Awards

2014-15 research expenditures

$4.9M

“My experience at UCI has inspired me to pursue a career in engineering education.”

“I’ve formed a network of like-minded engineering professionals, so being an Anteater Engineer is all about having a community.”

Dominique Ingato, ‘17

Stoney Middleton, ‘16

Ph.D. Chemical Engineering

B.S. Materials Science Engineering

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

ANTEATER

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

HOME

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

Like educators everywhere, Enrique Lavernia strives to prepare his students for success. Lavernia, the Samueli School Distinguished Professor of chemical engineering and materials science, however, may have a more compelling reason than most to succeed; he is also UCI’s provost and executive vice chancellor, overseeing the university’s academic and research efforts. A charismatic and affable administrator, Lavernia ﬁrst joined the UCI faculty in 1987 after earning a doctorate in materials engineering at MIT. He left in 2002 to become dean of UC Davis’ College of Engineering but returned to Irvine last year in his expanded role. His delight is palpable. “There’s just so much positive energy and engagement with the community here,” he says. “I feel really fortunate.” During his 13-year absence, the Samueli School remained close to his heart … and his ears. “Even from a distance, I kept hearing about some of the things that were going on here,” he says. “The school has a lot of programs that reach out to the community, that give the students real engineering experience. In many ways, I think the Samueli School is leading the way for engineering education.”

COMING RENOWNED ACADEMICIAN RETURNS WITH A FRESH PERSPECTIVE

Anna Lynn Spitzer

Steve Zylius

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

He speaks from experience. Lavernia remembers plodding through his ﬁrst two years of math, physics and chemistry as an engineering student at Brown University. “It certainly was not interesting,” he says. Everything changed when a professor encouraged him to conduct research in fracture mechanics.

“His work on powder processing of advanced materials has touched on most every major new class of structural alloys to be introduced over the past few decades,” says Chris Schuh, head of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Danae and Vasilis Salapatas Professor of Metallurgy. “As society’s needs for

“WE ARE AT AN EXCEPTIONALLY UNIQUE TIME FOR THIS CAMPUS, AND THE CHANCELLOR AND I HAVE MADE IT CLEAR TO THE ENTIRE CAMPUS COMMUNITY THAT ENGINEERING IS ONE OF OUR PRIORITIES.” “That started my entire career. I just fell in love with research and I never left.” A National Academy of Engineering member, he studies nanostructured materials, additive manufacturing, powder metallurgy and mechanical behavior. He’s particularly excited about a new class of materials called high-entropy alloys, substances constructed with equivalent quantities of ﬁve or more metals, which have potentially desirable properties. Lightweight, strong and fracture-resistant, these alloys have applications in high-end transportation systems, including airplanes, rockets and tanks. They are of particular interest to government agencies like NASA, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy; during his career, Lavernia has brought in some $50 million in research grants.

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

more energy-efficient materials continues to grow, Professor Lavernia’s strategy of optimizing alloys for maximum strength at minimal weight could have broad impact across many critical engineering sectors.” A Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Materials, Lavernia also is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award, which honors his lifetime achievements, and has been recognized by the Institute for Scientific Research as one of his field’s most influential researchers. He’s also a devoted mentor, recently traveling back to UC Davis for his remaining doctoral students’ graduations. Lavernia not only relishes these interactions – “I think students bring a fresh perspective” – but he believes that advising them and maintaining his research lab make him a better administrator.

“It lets me see what’s working and what’s not working and helps me improve systems that make things easier for the faculty.” Subhash Mahajan, a UC Davis Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and former special adviser to the chancellor, applauds Lavernia’s approach. “He created an ambience in the College of Engineering at UC Davis where everyone could do her or his best,” says Mahajan. “In addition, he is a creative and proliﬁc researcher. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his unique work on materials processing. UCI is lucky to have him.” Lavernia’s illustrious career easily could have begun elsewhere. In 1987, his brother, an orthopedic surgeon in residency at UC San Diego, sent Boston-based Lavernia a UCI job posting. “Initially I had no interest,” Lavernia admits, “but my brother said if I got an interview, I could visit him.” He got the interview … and something more. “I fell in love with the place. I liked the energy, I liked the people. But I didn’t think I’d get the job.”

University with a mechanical engineering degree and will begin graduate school in the fall, while Laura, who plans to become a veterinarian, is studying animal science at UC Davis. Lavernia has lofty aspirations for the Samueli School. “We are at an exceptionally unique time for this campus,” he says, “and the chancellor and I have made it clear to the entire campus community that engineering is one of our priorities.” Plans include doubling the faculty and adding more federally funded research centers. In the meantime, though, Lavernia praises the school’s development. “I’m proud of being afﬁliated with a school that has very high ambitions and competes with some of the oldest and most established engineering schools in the country,” he says.

I AM “ #ANTEATERENGINEER

I certainly see an attitude, it’s a cando attitude. The alumni seem to be very proud of their education here and that’s reflected in the extensive number of positive comments I receive from the people who hire them.

”

“The quality of our faculty is just tremendous, we have great programs, and the community seems to be really proud of what we’re doing. They’re involved and engaged and helping to make the school even better. “And that is what makes us very special.”

Surprised and pleased when an offer arrived, Lavernia and his wife, Julie, whom he met in an MIT study group, headed west. Today, Julie also is a renowned materials engineer, and the couple’s two children inherited their parents’ afﬁnity for science. Alejandro graduated this year from Purdue

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING Starting in the late 1960s as programs in civil and environmental engineering, the department has a long history of offering a rich and diverse educational experience to students. Courses are taught by world-class scholars who maintain connections with industry and are involved in developing innovative technologies in earthquake and structural engineering, transportation systems, water resources and environmental engineering. The department is dedicated to providing lifelong development, instilling a sense of professional responsibility and serving society.

1983 Department of Civil Engineering

1993

I AM

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

171

2015 - 16

M.S., Ph.D. degrees Civil Engineering Environmental Engineering

expands to include environmental engineering

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

450 2015 - 16

B.S. degrees Civil Engineering Environmental Engineering

“Anteater engineering is about the wisdom to ask questions and the courage to try something new.”

“We don’t just graduate with a degree, we graduate with a purpose to improve and keep moving forward.”

Brett Sanders, Ph.D.

Jenna Obenshain, ‘17

Department Chair

#ANTEATERENGINEER

GRADUATE STUDENTS

FOUNDED

B.S. Environmental Engineering

FACULTY & RECOGNITION

full-time

3 3

National Academy of Engineering Members Presidential Young Investigator Awards

emeritus

2 2

NSF CAREER Awards Distinguished Professors

RESEARCH & EXPENDITURES

world-class centers

research thrusts

Structures and Materials Transportation Water

2014-15 research expenditures

$4.9M

“My UCI experience gave me the technical problem solving and leadership skills to rapidly progress to VP of worldwide operations at one of the nation’s best companies!”

“I did a master’s at another school, but still reference UCI as the place that shaped me. Always an Anteater at heart!”

“I was unaware of how significant ‘UCI School of Engineering 1979’ would be on my resume!”

Betsy Stivers, ‘80

Erik Espinoza, ‘99

Daniel Nahabedian, ‘79

B.S. Civil Engineering

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

CONCRETE

SOLUTIO RESEARCHER LOOKS TO NATURE TO CREATE A MORE SUSTAINABLE MATERIAL

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

Lori Brandt

Michael Kitada

Civil engineer Mo Li grew up in a coastal town in China best known for producing Tsingtao, a popular beer. She came to the U.S. to earn two master’s degrees and a doctorate at the University of Michigan. After serving a short stint as an assistant professor at University of Houston, Li settled in another coastal area, at UCI, where she is brewing up a new mix for concrete. The most heavily used manmade material in the world, concrete plays an integral role in the development of civilization, dating back to ancient Roman times. Even the Egyptians used an early form of concrete over 5,000 years ago to build pyramids.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

Today, the manufacturing of Portland cement – the key ingredient in concrete – accounts for 5 percent of worldwide industrial energy consumption and is responsible for 5-8 percent of human-generated global CO2 emissions, roughly, the CO2 equivalent of 305 million automobiles. As the world population grows and the economy expands, annual consumption of concrete increases and so, too, does its environmental footprint. It’s no wonder scientists around the world are trying to make a better, greener, more sustainable concrete. Li, an assistant professor of civil engineering, explores the chemistry and physics of concrete at the nano-, micro- and macroscales, aiming to create the next generation of the widely used material. And while some researchers are looking for ways to green the production of cement, Li is focused on its life cycle to improve sustainability and resilience.

Her research shows progress with three new enhanced capabilities: repeatable self-healing, extreme strength and toughness, and an encoded “smart” sensibility. These new concrete materials can have many applications: from long-lasting and low-maintenance bridges and pavements to coastal infrastructure better equipped to withstand natural hazards; from safer and longer-term storage of nuclear wastes to more effective carbon sequestration. “Concrete is inherently brittle and thus cracks easily,” explains Li. “Cracking can be caused by a variety of loads and environmental conditions. It can open channels for chemical attack, water permeation, chloride penetration and corrosion of steel reinforcements. The conventional approach to designing stronger, higher-strength concrete does not necessarily lead to more a durable concrete. Just like steel, increased material strength is often at the cost of increased brittleness.”

For a blueprint, Li looks to nature − seashells or injured skin − where biological materials naturally possess damage tolerance and self-healing capacity optimized through millennia of evolution. She wondered if she could design these beneﬁcial features into concrete. To ﬁnd out, her group investigates the complex kinetics, chemistry, structure and properties of self-healing products formed within cracks (e.g. calcium silicate hydrate, C-S-H, and calcite, CaCO3), linking nanoscale healing phenomena to macroscale recovery of material properties. By controlling the formation and submicron properties of C-S-H within cracks, coupled with modifying the damage behavior of the material under loads, Li’s new concrete can manage and heal its own damage. “Our work is a unique integration of cement chemistry, fracture mechanics and multiscale materials science,” says Li, whose new material goes beyond sealing the cracks; it actually heals the cracks to regain mechanical properties.

“MATERIALS ARE EVERYWHERE. THEY ARE HOW WE INTERACT WITH THE WORLD; THEY ARE HOW WE LIVE IN THE WORLD. IF YOU CAN FUNDAMENTALLY IMPROVE OR CHANGE THE MATERIAL, YOU MIGHT CHANGE THE WORLD.”

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

I AM “ #ANTEATERENGINEER

functionality without having to perform maintenance.” Li has two other ideas to improve the life cycle of concrete, both funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. One is to design an ultrastrong and super-tough material, which could be used by the DOE to build small modular reactors. Her other project is to encode concrete with a “smart” self-sensing functionality, so that a structure would be able to sense distributed damage, strain and corrosion wherever it is located and deliver a more accurate early warning for maintenance crews.

“The repeatable self-healing concrete that Mo Li is developing with her group is quite innovative,” says A. Erik Schlangen, a civil engineer and pioneer of selfhealing materials at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. “This is important because concrete structures are constantly under load. Cracked and healed material will again be stretched and new cracks will develop or the healed cracks will open again. Selfhealing concretes make structures more durable and ensure longer service life with continued

Li believes California’s diverse geography, with its mountains, desert and coastal areas, wet and dry regions and various temperatures, aids her research goals. “I can investigate new concrete materials in different natural environments. Southern California provides various conditions for ﬁeld tests in addition to laboratory studies.”

UCI offers great opportunities for collaboration with the smartest minds from different backgrounds. The interdisciplinary nature of my research in materials fits nicely in this environment, which allows me to work with other researchers to solve complex problems.

”

Materials research intrigues Li because it allows her the opportunity to do something that’s never been done. “Materials are everywhere. They are how we interact with the world; they are how we live in the world,” she says. “If you can fundamentally improve or change the material, you might change the world.”

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING & COMPUTER SCIENCE The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science maintains close ties to industry; in fact, all curricula are developed with partners and are constantly reﬁned to meet real-world demands and rapid changes in technology. Laboratories in both hardware and software and a close afﬁliation with the university’s major research centers facilitate development of new technologies in such areas as nanotechnology, distributed computing and secure networks.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

FOUNDED

1983

304

Department of Electrical Engineering

M.S., Ph.D. degrees

1990

Electrical and Computer Engineering Networked Systems

expands to include computer science

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

809 2015 - 16

B.S. degrees Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering Computer Science and Engineering

“It means being part of a large family of successful, progressive and innovative people.”

“I did my master’s at UCLA, but UCI felt more like family to me.”

Ed Hernandez, ‘91

Linyi Xia, ‘14

B.S. Computer Science & Engineering

I AM

#ANTEATERENGINEER

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

2015 - 16

B.S. Electrical Engineering

FACULTY & RECOGNITION

full-time

4 1 9

National Academy of Engineering Members Presidential Young Investigator Award

affiliated

3 2

Endowed Chairs Chancellor’s Professors

NSF CAREER Awards

“Being an Anteater Engineer is about exploring and stretching the limits of our imagination, creativity and engineering prowess to benefit mankind.” H. Kumar Wickramasinghe, Ph.D. Nicolaos G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Chair

RESEARCH & EXPENDITURES

world-class centers

research thrusts

Circuits and Devices Computer Science and Engineering Systems

2014-15 research expenditures

$9.8M “It means persevering because you know there are bigger things in this world besides yourself and you want to contribute to that.”

“My UCI education, which was personal and handson, was critical to my career development at The Boeing Company.”

Linda Banh, ‘17

John J. Tracy, ‘87

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Ph.D. Engineering

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

A PIECE ELECTRICAL ENGINEER SIMPLIFIES WIRELESS NETWORK DESIGN

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

Ask Syed Jafar about his groundbreaking research into the capacity of digital communication networks and he quickly begins talking about cake. The UCI electrical engineer and his colleagues have developed a mathematical model that shows how a concept called interference alignment can allow each user to access half a network’s capacity. Or, as Jafar would put it, instead of slicing the cake into increasingly tiny pieces, everyone gets half. More than just an analogy, the idea’s simplicity lies at the heart of what Jafar loves about his ﬁeld and what he brings to UCI’s research labs and classrooms. “The idea of discovering a fundamental truth of nature, that to me is very beautiful,” says Jafar. “That’s the reason I’m attracted to information theory. Generally, what I am looking for is a statement that is short and easy to say, but captures something very profound. “When we talk about everybody getting half a cake, I see that as beautiful more than I see it as useful. It makes you think. What are the implications of such a result theoretically and what are the difﬁculties you would face if you tried to do this in practice? All those things are hidden behind this simple statement.”

CAKE

William Diepenbrock

Michael Kitada

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

Jafar has won frequent recognition for his contributions, including the 2015 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists in physical sciences and engineering. The $250,000 award accompanies annual honors during his career, among them more than ﬁve UCI teaching awards. Colleagues say those awards reflect an original way of thinking and a clarity of communication that Jafar employs with students and researchers alike. “He is a superb teacher,” says Shlomo Shamai, a distinguished professor at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who frequently collaborates with Jafar. “Subjects that are truly not simple, he manages to explain them in such a clear way.” Shamai says he was impressed when he met Jafar, then a postdoctoral student and intern at Bell Laboratories, more than 13 years ago. “He is very talented, very special,” Shamai says. “He is driven by basic scientiﬁc curiosity and works until everything shapes up. It is very rare that people of his academic

seniority have this kind of approach these days.” Penn State Assistant Professor Viveck Cadambe, who conducted research with Jafar for ﬁve years, says Jafar’s original thinking knocks down barriers and reveals new insights. “He is creative in getting around obstacles that you face in research,” Cadambe says. “He analyzes mathematical models in a manner that brings to light fundamentally new, useful insights about the underlying engineering application.”

as my identity,” he says. When he was growing up in India, Jafar says, engineering and medicine were considered the primary acceptable career pursuits – although in his family, any scientiﬁc pursuit was unexpected. “I come from a family of all artists. Everybody in my family are poets, writers. I’m the ﬁrst person in my family to go into sciences.” That has colored his perspective.

Today, he lives close to UCI with his wife and 9-year-old son, and says the peaceful campus helps him focus on his research. He has become a big fan of UCI volleyball, attending almost every game for the last two years.

“Even in sciences, my personal interest has always been in things that are beautiful,” he says. “That’s not exactly what you expect an engineer to say because engineers are supposed to care more about what works, less about why it works or whether it’s beautiful or not. The positive message is that even if you’re somebody who is not so practically oriented – and I don’t consider myself practically oriented, but somebody who cares about very fundamental questions – there’s still room for you in engineering.”

“The longer you are at a place, the more you tend to identify with it. Since I’ve been here for 12 years, there’s a lot more of UCI that I count

The information theory ﬁeld initially focused on communication between a single transmitter and receiver. As digital communication

Jafar, born in India, earned a master of science from Caltech in 1999 and a doctorate from Stanford in 2003, both in electrical engineering. He joined the Samueli School of Engineering in 2004.

“THE WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SETTING IS JUST ONE SETTING. ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND THE MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLE THAT IS BEING USED TO ALIGN THESE SIGNALS, YOU CAN ANSWER QUESTIONS IN OTHER FIELDS.”

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

systems have became more complex, the ﬁeld has shifted to systems in which many transmitters connect with many receivers. Known as interference networks, these systems are akin to multiple conversations going on at the same time at the same table, according to Jafar. The goal is to determine how quickly the networks can reliably send information. “How do you efﬁciently divide resources between the transmitters so everybody gets to communicate reliably without interfering or killing each other’s transmission – that is the main question,” he says. “These network limits are the holy grail in network information theory.” Conventional wisdom held that with each new user, everyone got a smaller slice of cake. Jafar’s research has demonstrated a broader view. “Mathematically, as it turns out, everyone [can] get half the cake.” This is done by aligning the incoming signals so that from the perspective of each user, all the other signals occupy half of the network’s capacity, leaving the other half open. Jafar and his team crystallized the idea of interference

alignment in a 2008 paper. Since then, they have applied it to different aspects of digital communications. “The idea, in my opinion, is more important than the result itself. Suppose you invented division or something; there are many things you can do with that,” Jafar says. “The wireless communication setting is just one setting. Once you understand the mathematical principle that is being used to align these signals, you can answer questions in other ﬁelds, such as distributed storage communication networks.” Jafar seeks to communicate his love of such fundamental ideas to his electrical engineering and computer science students.

I AM “ #ANTEATERENGINEER

I have so many colleagues that I respect and admire at UCI, and perhaps more than anything else, I am grateful for the amazing students over the years who have consistently exceeded all my expectations.

”

“I feel like there needs to be more appreciation of the concepts themselves, going beyond applications, because many of the things we enjoy today as applications started out as concepts. “I try to emphasize that,” he says, telling students: “Eventually you will learn how all of these basic ideas are used to do a lot of different things, but take a moment to try to appreciate what the concept itself is saying – to see its intrinsic beauty.”

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

MECHANICAL & AEROSPACE ENGINEERING Starting with a program in mechanical engineering in the early 1970s, the department has grown tremendously in numbers, infrastructure and reputation. The faculty are world-recognized experts in their ﬁelds and have achieved top honors and distinctions. The undergraduate programs blend fundamentals with hands-on design experience and include research opportunities in a variety of laboratories. Graduate programs are recognized nationally and internationally for their impact and scholarship.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

FOUNDED

1983

139

Department of Mechanical Engineering

M.S., Ph.D. degrees

1990

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

expands to include aerospace

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

980 2015 - 16

B.S. degrees Aerospace Engineering Mechanical Engineering

“Anteater Engineers are at the fulcrum of innovative research, closely tied with technology, engineering and science industries.”

“My Anteater engineering education equipped me for decades of successfully developing unmanned aerial vehicles for all kinds of use.”

Daniel Jaimes, ‘19

Douglas Thorpe, ‘82

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

I AM

#ANTEATERENGINEER

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

2015 - 16

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

FACULTY & RECOGNITION

full-time

4 1 1 3 1

National Academy of Engineering Members European Academy of Sciences Member Presidential Young Investigator Award NSF CAREER Awards

affiliated

2 2 2 1

Distinguished Professors

RESEARCH & EXPENDITURES

world-class centers, including 1 NSF I/UCRC

research thrusts

Endowed Chairs Chancellor’s Professors Army Research Office Young Investigator Award

Biomechanical Engineering

Fluid Mechanics & Aerodynamics

Design & Manufacturing

Mechanics of Solids, Structures & Materials

Dynamic, Controls & Robotics

Microsystems & Nanomaterials

Energy & Environment

Power &Propulsion

2014-15 research expenditures

$10.7M

DOE Early Career Award

“Anteater Engineers receive a top-notch education and graduate ready to enter the workforce equipped to hold their own.”

“UCI has been my home for 23 years and it’s been a good life, collaborating with excellent faculty, students and staff on achieving our mission.”

“I learned how to design in class, but to have real composite hands-on experience with the human powered airplane project, it’s a heck of a thing to talk about in interviews.”

Eric Haley, ‘95

Ken Mease, Ph.D.

Jacqueline Thomas, ‘14

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Department Chair

B.S. Aerospace Engineering

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

PUSHING

BOUND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SETS AN INCREDIBLE PACE OF DISCOVERY

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

ARIES Anna Lynn Spitzer

Michael Kitada

Those intending to keep pace with Tim Rupert had better buckle in. In a seldom-achieved feat, the wunderkind earned his doctorate in materials science in 2011 from MIT, a mere four years after receiving – also in only four years – a joint bachelor’s/ master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

“I HAVE A DOZEN BOOKS ON MY SHELF THAT WILL TELL YOU HOW TRADITIONAL STEEL DEFORMS. BUT NANOMATERIALS BEHAVE VERY DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE THEIR INTERNAL MICROSTRUCTURE IS SO SMALL.” 46

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

Rupert immediately joined the Samueli School as an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, where he continues, rapid-fire, to amass accomplishments. He won a 2013 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, a 2015 U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program grant, and this year, a Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the Department of Defense’s Army Research Office. Rupert, however, doesn’t take “AS FAR AS I KNOW, THEY HAVE BROKEN himself too seriously. With a boyish THE WORLD RECORD FOR THESE countenance and a ready laugh, he refers often to the fun he’s having with MATERIALS IN THIS HARD-TO-OBTAIN AND his work. “I really like being in the lab CRITICAL PROPERTY COMBINATION.” and not knowing what the answer is, and trying to figure it out. The problem-solving – that was always the fun thing,” he says. “It’s still fun.” His Nanoscale Mechanics and Materials Lab uses experimentation, characterization and computational techniques to understand nanocrystalline metals and alloys, thin film materials and atomic-level interfaces. His goal: to engineer better metallic materials at the nanoscale level, where the possibilities are almost endless. Rupert controls the materials’ mechanical properties by doping their boundaries – adding carefully selected elements to the interfaces between their crystals to improve strength, ductility and other properties. And because nanocrystals are so much smaller than standard crystals, they offer far more grain boundaries – and therefore infinitely more interfaces – that can ultimately change their behavior. He successfully demonstrated this approach in a new copper zirconium alloy that is both tremendously strong and highly ductile (able to deform under stress without breaking). These properties usually occur in reverse proportion: the stronger the material, the less ductile it is and vice-versa. But by changing the chemistry, Rupert designed a material with healthy doses of both characteristics. Martin Harmer, the Alcoa Foundation Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, was instrumental in developing the grain boundaries theory upon which Rupert bases his own work. “Professor Rupert’s group has cleverly applied the Lehigh grain boundary complexion concept in order to engineer nanocrystalline alloys to have spectacular mechanical properties – specifically a combination of exceptionally high ductility and strength,” Harmer says. “As far as I know, they have broken the world record for these materials in this hard-to-obtain and critical property combination.” The minuscule nanomaterials fascinate Rupert. “I have a dozen books on my shelf that will tell you how traditional steel deforms. But nanomaterials behave very differently because their internal microstructure is so small,” he says.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

ENGINEERING A BETTER METAL

All common metals are composed of microscopic crystals known as grains.

The interface (empty space) between grains is the grain boundary.

How changing grain boundaries helps create a less brittle nanostructured metal

Atoms

While metals can be strong and brittle or ductile and weak, an ideal metal for building structures or devices would be both strong and ductile.

How the process works Tim Rupert, principal investigator at UCI’s Nanoscale Mechanics & Materials Laboratory, is working to develop a new metal that is both strong and ductile.

Copper atom Zirconium atom

Copper and zirconium particles are combined to create a new solid solution.

WHEN HEATED TO 950° C

Zirconium atoms move from within the grains’ tightly-locked shape to ﬁll in and expand the grain boundary. Grain boundary

AS SOLUTION MELTS

Atoms in the grain interior remain in order (solid state). Atoms in the th grain boundary become more randomly arranged (liquid state).

WHEN COOLED Freezing the solution keeps the grain boundary in this state of disorder. This his combination of solid and liquid state results in a strong, damage-resistant metal. Graphic by Sharon Henry

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

His quest to understand how materials’ internal structures control their properties is rooted in physics: what causes the atoms in particular materials to act in a certain way? “If you understand what’s happening inside the material, it’s super easy to do the engineering,” he says with characteristic enthusiasm. “Tim has always been a high-energy, high-throughput researcher,” says his graduate adviser, Chris Schuh, head of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Danae and Vasilis Salapatas Professor of Metallurgy. “I think this is because he is not only a creative thinker, able to ﬁnd interesting new questions and unsolved problems, but … he has an uncanny ability to focus in on the most effective approach to addressing those questions and solve those problems. “He managed to complete a thesis blending computer simulations and challenging experiments in only four years at MIT, and launched himself into an academic career without even stopping for a postdoc – or a breath!” Schuh continues. “At UCI, he has maintained his incredible pace of discovery.” Rupert says the new materials will have applications in bridges, buildings, airplanes, cars and other vehicles, making them lighter and/ or more energy efﬁcient and allowing improved strength with far less material.

I AM “ #ANTEATERENGINEER

In my opinion, an Anteater Engineer is forward-thinking and innovative. UCI is a young school that is driven by new ideas. Conservative concepts about research, teaching and school organization are going out the window as we try new things.

”

These nanostructured materials also can play a role in nuclear energy, hydrogen storage and even electronics. “These applications are not structural, they’re not holding the load on a bridge, but a lot of failure in electronics, in fuel cells and batteries, are mechanical in nature,” he says. For him, though, it’s all about the unlimited possibility of creation. “It’s more about designing and discovering new materials. And the things we’re figuring out are helpful in all these different places.” These next-generation materials could be market-ready in five to 10 years. “There’s a lot of things we’re trying to solve,” he says. “If we’re being ambitious, maybe we’ll solve them by the end of this Army Research Office grant in three years. Then we can start making big pieces and fabricating real equipment out of it.” With Rupert at the helm, that’s a pretty sure bet.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

Patrick Hong ’95

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Atsushi Horiba ’75

B.S.; ’77, M.S. Electrical Engineering

John Labib ’94

B.S. Civil Engineering

Patrick Liu ’92

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering

During the 2015-16 academic year, UCI celebrated its 50th anniversary as one of the nation’s leading universities. To honor those who made a signiﬁcant impact in their profession, or in other ways have brought distinction to their alma mater, the school recognized 34 illustrious alumni by inducting them into the inaugural 2015 Samueli School of Engineering Hall of Fame.

Momtaz Afshin ’08

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Newsha Ajami ’06 Ph.D. Civil Engineering

Gary Ashford ’70

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Georges Belfort ’69

M.S.; ’72, Ph.D. Civil Engineering

Roger Brum ’83

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Kurt Busch ’93

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Brian Cooper ’81

B.S. Electrical Engineering

David Cuccia ’03

M.S.; ’06, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering

Nick Desai ’91

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Amit Dhadwal ’93

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Eby Friedman ’81

M.S.; ’89, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering

Marinela Gombosev ’05 B.S. Electrical Engineering

Paramesh Gopi ’91

B.S.; ’93, M.S.; ’03, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering

Jai Krishan Hakhu ’79

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering

Bernard Harguindeguy ’81 B.S. Electrical Engineering

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

Julian “Woody” Macias ’72 B.S. Electrical Engineering

Melodie Nicholes ’95 B.S. Civil Engineering

Carrine Palm Walborn ’96 B.S. Civil Engineering

Stephen Palm ’87

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Robert Peck ’76

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering

Leila Rohani ’85

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Ayman Salama ’95 Ph.D. Civil Engineering

Eric Shen ’93

B.S.; ’95, M.S. Civil Engineering

Krishna Shenoy ’90

B.S. Electrical Engineering

Betsy Stivers ’80

B.S. Civil Engineering

Douglas Thorpe ’82

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

John Tracy ’87 Ph.D. Engineering

Truc Vu ’88 M.S.; ’92, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering (posthumously)

Thomas Yuen ’74 B.S. Electrical Engineering

Jack Zhao ’93

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering

I AM ››

FOUNDING FATHER of the 3-D Chip

››

Evoke Neurosciences, Inc. Executive VP

Era”

››

Horiba International Corp. President and CEO

››

Drone PIONEER

››

Meggitt Defense Systems President

National Academy of Engineering MEMBER

Microsemi Wafer Fab Technology VP

››

Business, Social Enterprise Lab Senior Fellow of Hybrid Waveguide Lens

››

Car and Driver Magazine EDITOR

››

Health Pioneer Recipient Alumni HONOREE

››

Heal CEO

››

LEAD DRIVER of the Mars Rover

››

Horiba Ltd. CHAIRMAN

››

UCI Medal Recipient

Dedicated MENTOR

U.S. Naval COMMANDER

››

INVENTOR

Broadcom Fellow

Venture Strategies Innovations Founder and President

››

Applied Micro Circuits PRESIDENT and CEO

››

›› ››

››

›› ››

Royal

National Institutes of

››

Distinguished

UCI Extraordinarious

Calif. Council of Science and Technology POLICY

The Boeing Company CTO

DEAN at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Broadcom Senior Technical DIRECTOR

System National Advisory Committee and Astronautics Fellow

››

JLA Structural Engineers Founder and President

Co-Inventor of the Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging Technique

››

USC’s Marshall School of

Parade Technologies CEO and Chairman

Global Hawk Radar Integration Contract CHIEF ENGINEER

Engineering Educator Awardee

C200 Scholars AWARDEE

DESIGN LEADER of Industry First CMOS OC48 and OC192 SONET Transceivers

America 2012 Lifetime Achievement Awardee

››

Lantronix, Corp. CEO

›› ››

Gubernatorial Appointee to Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board

2013 “Hottest 25” Business People in O.C.

Lauds & Laurel Recipient FELLOW

››

NASA Exceptional Achievement MEDAL RECIPIENT

Aeronautical SOCIETY FELLOW

One of the “100 Chemical Engineers of the Modern

››

Female FIGHTER PILOT in Operation Enduring Freedom

2008 ACS Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Recipient HelloWorld Executive VP

Google SCHOLAR: Cited more than 9,000 times

Modulated Imaging, Inc. CEO/CTO

Inventor of a New Class of Photodiodes

››

SAE Teetor Awardee

Serial ENTREPRENEUR

››

Tech

Outstanding

Designated FEDERAL OFFICER, U.S. Maritime Transportation

Elastic Beam Founder and CEO

››

Proctor and Gamble VICE PRESIDENT

French Legion of Honor RECIPIENT

››

TranSystems Western Region Vice President

American Institute of Aeronautics

››

Prenostik FOUNDER and CEO

HALL OF FAME

INDUCTEE SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

For more than 10 years, former Dean Nicolaos Alexopoulos presided over the Samueli School– guiding it, molding it, augmenting facilities, faculty and programs, and amplifying its national and international reputation.

its inception, and this endowment ensures the continued strength of our EECS department in the coming years,” said Gregory Washington, the Samueli School Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering.

Last spring, the university and the school honored Alexopoulos’ contributions by creating an endowed chair named for him and his wife.

and Computing, launched the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and initiated and supported the creation of the UCI branch of Calit2 – the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

Alexopoulos joined the UCI faculty in 1997 as engineering school dean and EECS professor. He quickly made his mark on the Samueli School, leading efforts to create the National Fuel Cell Research Center and the Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility (INRF), and establishing UCI’s ﬁrst named school. He also founded the Center for Pervasive Communications

A LASTING The Nicolaos G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Chair in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UCI is funded by the Samueli Foundation, the Opus Foundation and the UC Presidential Match for Endowed Chairs. The $2 million endowment supports faculty salaries, graduate fellowships, teaching, research and service activities in electrical engineering and computer science. “Electrical engineering and computer science has been a pillar in the engineering school since

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

A member of the National Academy of Engineering and an ISI Highly Cited Author, Alexopoulos also oversaw the establishment of the Center for Engineering Science in Design, a multidisciplinary graduate program called “LifeChips,” and the Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology. He retired from UCI in 2008, and currently serves as vice president for academic programs & university

relations at the Broadcom Foundation. H. Kumar Wickramasinghe, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is the Alexopoulos chair’s ﬁrst recipient. He said he is “truly honored and excited” to hold the

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENTS LEAD TO NEWLY ENDOWED CHAIR

LEGACY Anna Lynn Spitzer

position. “Professor Alexopoulos is a distinguished electrical engineer who made major contributions to the growth of our school. This recognition is a ﬁtting tribute to him.”

consulting company. A long-time supporter of the Samueli School, she is a charter member of the ARCS Foundation Orange County Chapter, which supports UCI

Sue Alexopoulos is a former elementary school teacher, who also managed a small engineering

graduate students studying science, medical research and engineering, and has been active on the

Colin Young-Wolff

organization’s national board.

“It’s only ﬁtting that if anybody in the history of this school was going to get this honor, it be Nick and Sue Alexopoulos,” Washington said.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

A CELEBRATION OF GRADUATE

SUCCESS They’re accomplished, they’re award-winning, they’re Samueli School alumni . . . and they’re among UCI’s very best.

FOUR ENGINEERING ALUMNI RECEIVE SPECIAL RECOGNITION Anna Lynn Spitzer

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

Sharon Henry

The university’s graduate division culled through hundreds of nominations to select the 50 most successful graduate-level and postdoctoral alumni in its history, and four Anteater Engineers made the cut. The winners were honored last spring in a day-long event marking the culmination of UCI’s 50th anniversary festivities. An alumni review committee selected the Celebration of Graduate Success top-50, based on outstanding professional accomplishments, community impact and contributions to their ﬁelds.

Radhika Mohan Bodduluri earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering in 1990 and has been innovating in robotic surgery ever since. He began his career at Accuray, Inc., a manufacturer of noninvasive robotic radiosurgical devices that perform brain surgery without the need for incisions. After serving as the company’s vice president of research and development, he left in 2003 to co-found Restoration Robotics, a manufacturer of medical hair-transplant robotic devices. His most recent startup, Zap Surgical Systems, Inc., develops radiosurgery devices for removing tumors and other foreign objects. “We hope to make radiosurgery widely available around the world,” says Bodduluri, who says he always knew he wanted to be a mechanical engineer. “Most of my classmates switched their disciplines to computer science in graduate school, but I never had any such interest!”

RADHIKA MOHAN BODDULURI

In 2013, Bodduluri was honored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers with its Leonardo da Vinci Award, recognizing excellence and innovation in engineering. Bodduluri, who received his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, came to UCI with his adviser, J. Michael McCarthy, after earning his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. “I distinctly remember how Dr. McCarthy was recruited to bring kinematics and mechanisms research to UCI,” he says, “and I was proud to be one of the ﬁrst students to be part of this effort.” McCarthy, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, says Bodduluri’s graduate research was leading-edge. “Mohan programmed what was the most innovative graphics system at the time to generate three-dimensional images of the mathematics solutions to a complex set of equations, providing a way to explore the design of controlled spherical movement,” McCarthy says. “This work remains one of the few solutions to this challenging design problem.”

ALEXANDRIA BOEHM

That research ended up serving Bodduluri well. “My ﬁrst job… used robots to treat brain tumors and all my research directly applied to the job – a rarity, I was told,” he says. “My career, which has spanned over two decades, has been mostly in medical robotics and automation, and has had direct roots to what I was doing during my Ph.D. program at UCI.”

Alexandria Boehm, the Clare Booth Luce Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, received her doctorate in 2000 in environmental engineering. Her research focuses on coastal water quality and sanitation activities, efforts crucial to protecting human health and the ecosystem. A senior fellow at both the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Center for Innovation in Global Health, Boehm has a passion for applied environmental problems and solution-oriented research.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

SALVATORE CAMPIONE

“My connection with the environment is strong and I value the sense of peace I feel when I connect with nature,” she says. “Environmental engineers do interdisciplinary research to solve some of the most pressing challenges, including water scarcity, climate change, air pollution, water pollution and sanitation and hygiene in developing countries.” Boehm, who was chair of the West Coast Panel on Ocean Acidiﬁcation and Hypoxia in 2013-14, won a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2007, and two UCI postdoctoral teaching awards. She also served as a visiting scholar at the Paciﬁc Rim Center for Oceans and Human Health in 2007, and participated in the National Academy of Engineers’ Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in 2008. This year, she won a Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers. “I was really surprised but honored for being selected [for the UCI top-50],” Boehm says. “I’m proud that my hard work in graduate school and as a postdoc at UCI paid off.”

PETER THERKELSEN

Her graduate adviser, civil and environmental engineering Professor Stanley Grant remembers Boehm as “an absolute joy” in the lab and “ferociously intelligent,” and has delighted in watching her career blossom. “Ali very much reminds me of something my adviser told me when I was a graduate student at Caltech: ‘We know we’ve done our job when our students outdo us,’” Grant says. “I’m so proud of Ali’s many accomplishments.”

Salvatore Campione received two degrees – the laurea triennale and the laurea magistrale – cum laude in electronic engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, along with a master’s degree from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and his doctorate from UCI (in 2013) in electrical and computer engineering. Campione, a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, works on electromagnetic theory, antennas, metamaterials, plasmonics in nanostructures and optical devices for energy and optoelectronic applications. A member of numerous professional societies, he was selected a 2013 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar and received a 2013 IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship. His accomplishments include more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, 80 conference papers and two book chapters. He credits much of his success to his father, Rosario, also an electrical engineer. “His passion and drive helped me develop my passion and drive from a young age,” Campione says. “I knew in this ﬁeld I could make a difference in so many different areas.”

2015-16 DEAN’S REPORT

He also credits UCI and the Samueli School. “Anteater Engineers have knowledge, drive, determination, passion, loyalty and trustworthiness,” he says. “At UCI, I obtained the skills and the knowledge set needed for the job I hold at Sandia National Laboratories.”

R E T A E T N A T O G S R E ENGINE

“Salvatore has been one of the best students I have ever had, and indeed I am truly grateful he joined my research group,” said his adviser, electrical engineering and computer science Professor Filippo Capolino, on Campione’s nomination form. “He was a student with extremely high potential who has shown positive attitude and commitment toward learning, research and passion for science. He is deﬁnitely articulate and displays the ability to think clearly and creatively. Only a few people approach challenges in such a conscientious and hard-working manner.”

Peter Therkelsen, a research scientist and head of the Combustion Laboratory in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, earned bachelor’s (2003), master’s (2006), and doctoral (2009) degrees at UCI in mechanical and aerospace engineering. At LBNL, he focuses on industrial system efficiency and applied development of thermal systems, with an emphasis on the development of high-efficiency, fuel-flexible, lowemission heat and power systems. An author on more than 20 professional publications, he says he was “greatly honored” to be named to the top-50 list. “The accomplishments of UCI graduate students are numerous and exemplary, and I am very fortunate to be a UCI alumnus,” he says, adding: “Anteater Engineers prove their worth, are humble and viciously proud of their alma mater. The world-class education UCI offers provides the foundation for success.” Therkelsen says he knew as a college freshman that he wanted to work with “energy and things that move,” but he credits his professors and engineering staffers with guiding him to his eventual specialties. “They opened my eyes to thermal sciences and more importantly, the connections between engineering, energy, the environment, the economy and our societal structure,” he says. His graduate adviser, Derek Dunn-Rankin, remembers Therkelsen’s “remarkable accomplishment” at every stage of his student career. “He excelled not only in his experimental energy research, where he found boundaries of operation for small-scale advanced internal combustion engines, but in understanding the potential policy ramifications of his findings,” says Dunn-Rankin, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor. “In his current position . . . he continues to demonstrate his significant talents in advanced combustion science and energy policy.”

WE ARE ALUMNI

ANTEATERS!

The UCI Engineering Alumni Society has been reinvigorated by a group of eager engineering alumni that wants to create a lifelong connection to its alma mater. Their goal is to introduce engineering alumni to industry professionals, build opportunities for social engagement and provide a direct line to UCI. The society hosts networking mixers and programs with students as well as monthly social hours. A not-for-proﬁt chapter of the UCI Alumni Association, the UCI EAS fosters mutually beneﬁcial relationships between working engineers, faculty and students. The society brings alumni together to create a supportive community, offering opportunities that are not possible alone. It implements programs that embody the entrepreneurial spirit and technical excellence of the campus and alumni. All alumni are welcome in this newly energized and ambitious group. For more information, visit http://ucieas.weebly.com.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING • UC IRVINE

2015-16 DEANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S REPORT

As more and more students chose UCI for their engineering education, the university is planning to construct a new 90,000-square-foot Science and Engineering Convergence Building. It will bring together faculty and students from engineering, physical sciences, and information and computer sciences, creating a space for researchers to cross disciplines and work together in addressing the global grand challenges of today and tomorrow. We look forward to your support for this new building and thank you for your dedication to UCIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Samueli School of Engineering.

SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING â&#x20AC;˘ UC IRVINE

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