News

COE Researchers Score Hat Trick with Three CAREER Awards

This winter three young researchers at the College of Engineering have scored a collective hat trick by pulling in a trio of $400,000 awards from the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The much sought-after grants were received by Paul Dauenhauer of the Chemical Engineering Department, and David Irwin and Qiangfei Xia of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Nearly one-third of all faculty members at the college have won the esteemed NSF awards.

Polizzi’s FEAST Algorithm Included in Intel’s Math Kernel Library

The FEAST algorithm proposed in 2009 by Eric Polizzi of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department – an algorithm that represents a radical departure from "textbook approaches" to solving the legendary eigenvalue problem – received a major endorsement in early February when it was integrated into the Intel® Math Kernel Library, one of the world’s leading and most used mathematical libraries. Polizzi’s FEAST algorithm is now featured as the Intel library’s main eigenvalue solver, and it can be found under the name "MKL Extended EigenSolver."

McLaughlin Speaks About Chasing Storms Across Disciplines in Boston

On February 17, David McLaughlin, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the director of the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) at the College of Engineering, spoke about Chasing Storms Across Disciplines during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. McLaughlin gave his presentation during a symposium entitled "Dynamics of Disasters: Harnessing the Science of Networks to Save Lives," organized by Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor at the Isenberg School of Management. The symposium took place between 3:00 and 4:30 p.m. in Room 208 of the convention center.

Moritz Comments in Popular Mechanics Article

Csaba Andras Moritz, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the director of the Nanoscale Architectures Laboratory, was featured prominently in a story in Popular Mechanics about how scientists are developing ways of storing data using synthetic DNA. As the Popular Mechanics story explains, scientists in Nature report that they have converted a record number of digital megabytes into genetic code. The entire set of Shakespearean sonnets, a 26-second clip of Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, a photograph—they’ve all been recorded onto synthetic DNA, where they could be safely stored for thousands of years. But, as the article says, “don’t start shopping around for a DNA hard drive yet. It takes a lot of time to both write and read DNA sequences, and it also requires laboratory equipment.”

CAREER Research into Smart Buildings Can Make Them Cheaper and Greener

David Irwin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been issued a five-year, $461,434 grant from the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The NSF grant will support Irwin’s research for boosting energy efficiency in houses and buildings, which represent the largest segment of society’s energy usage. The title of Irwin’s project is “Model-based Energy Management for Sustainable Buildings.”

CASA Grant Promises to Save Lives and Property

The National Science Foundation (NSF), National Weather Service, and the City of Fort Worth have given the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), centered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a two-year, $1.34-million grant designed to accelerate the application of CASA’s revolutionary weather-tracking radar system, now being tested in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The CASA radars provide high-resolution, near-surface views of hazardous weather events such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, and flooding and allow emergency managers to broadcast faster, more accurate, more targeted storm warnings and forecasts to the public.

Alumnus Creates Video Game Inspired by 1984

UMass Amherst alumnus Patrick Ascolese, who graduated from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in 2002, is currently working on République, an upcoming game for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, PC, and Mac. It is the first full-length project for Camouflaj, the new video game company he joined in 2011. In Republique players control a network of cameras, computers, and everything else electronic to keep a woman named Hope safe from pursuers. The idea for the game came from the increased surveillance people face on a daily basis, according to Ascolese. He said it is a “what if” look if legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act ever leads to an Orwellian state.

NSF CAREER Award Supports Research in Emerging Nanodevice to Go Beyond Moore’s Law

Qiangfei Xia of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been issued a five-year, $400,000 grant from the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program to develop emerging nanoelectronic devices. The title of his project is “CAREER: Scaling of Memristive Nanodevices and Arrays." Xia’s NSF research addresses the biggest obstacle for the continued operation of Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who first predicted the trend in his 1965 paper.

Zink Featured in New NSF Video

Michael Zink of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is the featured researcher in a video produced by the National Science Foundation (NSF) about the NSF-funded Global Environment for Networking Innovation (GENI) program. GENI is a fast, programmable "virtual laboratory" that enables university researchers to experiment on so-called future internets. GENI is also a key part of a White House Initiative called US Ignite, which aims to realize the potential of fast, open, next-generation networks. In the video, Zink talks about his team's use of GENI for better weather forecasting. Watch video: http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_videos.jsp?cntn_id=124472&media_id=72661&org=NSF

Republican Publishes Article on Ganz

On December 26, the Springfield Republican published a feature article on the DIORAMA emergency management software system being perfected by Professor Aura Ganz of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Ganz has been awarded a four-year, $1.6-million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue her research on her computerized disaster-management response system. Ganz says the system is designed to organize chaotic, mass-casualty, disaster scenes, such as airliner, bus, and train wrecks, and cut the evacuation time of survivors in half. For the past several years, Ganz has been developing her DIORAMA I system, funded with the help of a $400,000 exploratory NIH grant.

News

Search