Hurricanes, earthquakes, and high winds all intrigue Nick Jones. Now as dean of the Engineering school to which he devoted 16 years, he takes the measure of other challenges on the horizon. Arriving in Baltimore on the heels of Hurricane Charlie, Nicholas P. Jones, an expert in structural dynamics and wind engineering, returned last August…
Archive
Winter 2005
Center for Leadership Education Cultivates Business Skills Features
One of the great things about a university com – munity is how ideas are generated through collaboration. The newly formed Center for Leadership Education (CLE) exemplifies that approach as it guides students in developing the business skills needed to invent the future. Once graduates move into the working world—whether as entrepreneurs, researchers, managers or…
A Bumper Crop of Research in Language Engineering Features
“Recognize Speech vs. Wreck a Nice Beach.” That phrase, part of a lecture title, sums up the enormous challenge of automatic speech recognition. To decipher the subtleties of language, computers must sift through accents, grammatical errors, ambient noise, and language oddities. Pair or pear? Sex or sects? Ta-may-toe or toe-mah-toe? Even more of a digital…
A.G.CHRISTIE: GENERATING GREATER PROFESSIONALISM Features
For almost five decades, in classrooms and corporations, the Mechanical Engineering professor applied his quiet work ethic and heat-power expertise to promoting professional standards for engineers. The bas-relief memorial plaque, located in the Engineering and Science section of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library on the Homewood campus, bears a succinct summary: “Scholar, Teacher, Leader of…
At the Interface of Work and Play Making Waves
As study buddies and roomies, three PhD students have become phenomenal friends. Any other time, it would be the beginning of a bad joke. What do Mrs. Claus, Army Barbie, and a biker chick have in common? If you’re Meredith Bauman, Susan Napier, and Melissa Travers—good friends, PhD students, and decked out in those Halloween…
Student Inventors Compete in Singapore Making Waves
Their low-cost cushion with sensors to prompt better posture proves they’re no slouches when it comes to ingenuity. “I’m one of those people whose mother was always telling them to sit up straight,” laughs Yen Shi Gillian Hoe ’04. That is exactly what judges did at the international Start-Up @ Singapore business competition (www.startup.org.sg/) last…
Hopkins KnowledgeNET Offers Alumni a Virtual Home Library Alumni up front
The Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association has launched an expansive new virtual library service for alumni. Hopkins KnowledgeNET™ offers alumni free online access to hundreds of academic journals, newspapers, e-books, reference materials, and even licensed journals. Alumni may also subscribe to an Enhanced Service, which offers access to more than 8,000 academic journals and professional…
Stuck in Traffic? Here’s Why. Alumni up front
When Alvin Lim ’02 PhD looks at any problem that involves optimization—whether it’s traffic flow, airline revenues, or grocery prices—he sees something called a Mathema- tical Program with Equilibrium Constraints (MPEC). MPECs, pioneered by Jong-Shi Pang, former Whiting School of Engineering professor of Mathematical Sciences (now Applied Mathematics and Statistics), offer a model for maximizing…
Alumni Awards Alumni up front
Heritage Award Anton T. Dahbura ’81, ’82 MSE, ’84 PhD is an emerging alumni leader. A native of El Salvador, he earned all three Whiting School of Engineering degrees in Electrical Engineering. Dahbura has a long tradition of involvement with and support of Johns Hopkins. He played on the Hopkins varsity baseball team and continues…
New Name, Same Mission: Excellence in Professional Studies back on campus
In October, Part-Time Programs in Engineering and Applied Science gained a new name: the Engineering and Applied Science friendsPrograms for Professionals, or EPP for short. The name change is being made to emphasize the program’s professional status rather than its part-time status, better reflecting the needs of students and its overall mission. The programs themselves…
Scenes from the SEA Picnic back on campus
Honors & Awards back on campus
The following are among the many awards Whiting School of Engineering faculty have received recently. • For his dedication to the field of nondestructive evaluation and his commitment to educating students, Robert E. Green Jr. was honored with the 2004 NDE Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). Green is the…
Four Departments Welcome New Chairs back on campus
Applied Mathematics and Statistics (AM&S): Daniel Naiman, who joined the faculty in 1982, became chair of the department last August. In 1997, he was elected a Fellow of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics, honoring his “consistently deep and seminal contributions in the interface of statistics, geometry and combinatorics, and for development of and synthesis of…
Northrop Grumman Networks with Students the wider world
Fifty Whiting School of Engineering students and 15 Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems engineers networked last fall at the company’s second annual student mixer, held on November 2 at the Johns Hopkins Club. Senior representatives from Northrop Grumman, the nation’s third largest defense enterprise, discussed internship and career opportunities with the students, who also had a…
First Two Schwarz Instructors Named the wider world
A luncheon on October 24 honored the two inaugural recipients of the William H. Schwarz Instructorship in Undergraduate Chemical Engineering Laboratory. They are Meredith Bauman (see a profile of her on page 26) and Kelly Hardesty, both of whom are PhD students in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. The Schwarz Instructorship fund was established in 2000…
Rob Spiller Promoted to Associate Dean the wider world
Robert J. “Rob” Spiller has been named associate dean for development and alumni relations in the Whiting School of Engineering, effective January 10. For the past three years, he served as the founding director of the Regional and International Programs in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations. Under Spiller’s leadership, this office has become…
WISE Move in Mentoring the wider world
To encourage more young women to become engineers and scientists, Johns Hopkins and Garrison Forest School are teaming up in an unusual partnership.
Lubrijet: A Cut Above the Competition Connections
Nozzles wear out at an alarming rate in water jet cutting. A novel method of reducing this abrasion has wide applications in manufacturing. Asked to describe his work, Joe Katz says, “I’m looking for trouble.” Katz, who holds the William F. Ward Sr. Distinguished Professorship in the Whiting School of Engineering, explains that in his…
The Sensing Robot Lab Notes
As he programs silicone microcircuits to mimic sensory systems, Ralph Etienne-Cummings keeps his eye on the lamprey eel and the fly. In search of inspiration for more sophisticated, more energy-efficient, and ever-smaller sensory systems to serve as the eyes, legs, and ears of next-generation robots, Ralph Etienne-Cummings and his colleagues continually look to nature. They…
Mixing it up with Metals High Performers
On the nano level, Evan Ma triggers structural changes to give copper and other metals exciting new twists in performance. In modern materials science, more exotic materials like carbon nanotubes and biomaterials may sometimes upstage metals. But En “Evan” Ma has been getting a lot of attention lately for his breakthrough work with nanostructured metals….
Next Gen Robotics: See Them Roar! High Performers
René Vidal develops the techniques that will enable computers to tell a tiger from a tree—and learn from what they see. Browse along the shelves of your local movie rental shop, and you’re sure to find them. From the 1926 classic Metropolis down to the present-day Star Wars, sci-fi films for decades have cast robots…
Energy in Action Editor's Note
The transmittal of intellectual energy from one generation to the next, from one colleague to another, takes place continually at the Whiting School of Engineering. Such couplings began nine decades ago with Engineering’s founding at the Johns Hopkins University. Our historical piece in this issue focuses on a remarkable professor whose Hopkins career spanned almost…
Taylor Auditorium Makes Teaching High-tech Covers
Since 1915 and the first class of Johns Hopkins Engineering students, Maryland Hall’s signature space has been the site of lectures and seminars. Now that space, transformed with state-of-the-art teaching technology, has been dedi- cated as the Harold N. Taylor Auditorium. It features electronically operated video/computer projection, enhanced lighting, improved HVAC, and the latest sound…