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Document 2685337

Vo l u m e I V • I s s u e 1 • S p r i n g 2 0 0 5
Dean’s Message
This is ambitious, but purposely so. Our
curriculum needs to evolve as ﬁelds increasingly come together and science and
technology infuse every aspect of daily
life, from politics to the environment.
Exposure
Engineering and applied sciences (E&AS)
often get grouped, and lost, under the
broader term “science.” Like medicine
and law, our practice is distinct and must
be treated as such. Our community is in
an ideal position to emphasize three of
E&AS’s most deﬁning characteristics:
Inside Education
S
ome of the greatest engineering successes are those that go unnoticed. We
sit in comfort as a plane lands without a
hitch during high winds. As we type a
letter, our computer traps a virus behind
the scenes. It is an age of the “invisible
engineer,” not only because of advances
in small-scale science, but because the
ingenuity of engineering and applied
sciences often lies hidden behind a
seamless interface. This leads me to ask
a tough question: How do we inspire
those who will never be professional
engineers or applied scientists to better
understand and appreciate technology
when they seldom need to go beyond
the interface or open the hood?
As I mentioned in my last message, after
a period of great renewal the Division
has indeed emerged and is poised to go
on to even greater heights. Our plans,
from our size to our structure to the
environment, all stem from one overarching goal: giving students the best
possible education. With that in mind,
we hope to accomplish two critical
tasks in the years ahead:
• exposing all undergraduates to key
areas of science and technology,
especially the relationship between
science, technology, and society
• using innovative ways to teach stu-
dents, especially experiential learning
through hands-on experiments.
Applied<—>basic. The push-pull relation-
ship between basic and applied research
is our golden rule. Strength in foundational disciplines, from applied physics
to computer science, provides a basis for
advancing the boundaries of knowledge.
At the same time, students should understand how to use resulting technologies
to promote the social good.
Integrative. E&AS is inherently inter-
disciplinary and integrative. Not only
does E&AS expose students to multiple
ﬁelds, but it also inspires them to collaborate and learn together—skills that
are essential in everyday life and work.
Linking. Given its roots in mathematics
and science, E&AS has an exceptional
way of linking with the professional
schools. Tools developed in engineering
are used to drive discovery in areas such
as biology and medicine. Advances play
a critical role in informing policies and
practices in business. With a parallel emphasis on “systems-level” thinking, E&AS
also provides students with approaches
useful for tackling any problem.
Experience
The “Harvard experience”—immersion
in a multifaceted intellectual setting—is
part of what makes learning engineering
and applied sciences at DEAS singular.
We have increasingly become a key part
of that “experience” through promoting
experiential learning. While incorporating the use of everyday technology
provides a start, a better investment is
letting students get inside the latest
gadget: for example, going below the
wires and teasing apart the fundamental
discoveries in physics, microelectronics, and materials that led to the 10,000
songs in their pockets. The counterpart
to this “learning by disintegration” is
“learning by integration.” Through
hands-on design and an introduction to
basic function and form, we teach students how to synthesize: moving from
an idea (such as modeling a circuit) to
an application (actually building one).
In addition, we are also
• introducing new core courses such as
“Bits” and “Energy, Environment, and
Industrial Development,” and in the
near future, developing a tentatively
titled “Tech A&B” sequence—an overview that will provide perspectives on
science and technology
• expanding our high-school education-
al programs, like GK-12, to provide a
path that may lead students directly
to our door and help inspire interest in
engineering
• offering more ways for students to
discover who we are and what we do
by supporting clubs and societies,
creating a new social center/café in
Maxwell Dworkin, and increasing our
presence on campus through concentration fairs, research demonstrations,
and general lectures.
Opening up the black box to discover
“the how and the why” leads to a greater
understanding of our world and of
ourselves, which in turn informs many
of our decisions and gives us greater
control. The power and rewards of such
discovery should not be limited to the
few, but need to be made accessible to
all students. The next generation of
political, business, academic, and technical leaders who will help run countries and companies will take what they
have learned with them. They will share
that knowledge with everyone they
work with—and that, ultimately, will
make engineering and applied sciences,
and the Division, shine. J
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T
he following article is intended to provide
a broad snapshot of diversity at DEAS
and to highlight past trends. The data reﬂect
the latest and most complete diversity-related
information that was readily available at the
time of publication.
Charts 1– 4 provide a look at the Division’s
entire student body by ethnicity, residency
status, concentration, and gender. Charts 5–7
provide a snapshot of national undergraduate
and graduate enrollment in engineering only,
and are provided for reference (not direct comparison). See the sidebar on page 3 to learn
more about enrollment in computer science.
Complete national data is available on the websites listed in the Resources section on page 4.
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Crosscurrents
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A look at the nation
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Sources: CST, data derived from Engineering Workforce Commission, Engineering and Technology Enrollments; Women in Engineering
Programs and Advocates Network, www.wepan.org
2 I DEAS – Spring 2005
Looking back
DEAS trends. DEAS, like Harvard itself, has an exceptionally
diverse undergraduate student body. While trends among speciﬁc ethnic groups have been mixed, during 1999–2003 almost
40 percent of our students were either minorities or foreign
nationals. The total percentage of undergraduate female concentrators increased from 22 to almost 26 percent over the
same period. In terms of speciﬁc concentrations, engineering
sciences has grown the most overall during the past ﬁve years
(from 74 to 85 students); of particular note, the number of
women in this concentration has nearly tripled, growing from
10 to 29 students. The number of concentrators in computer
science, in keeping with national trends, has declined sharply
(from 187 in 1999 to 116 in 2003), especially among women
(from 31 to 16 over the same period).
While the total number of graduate students at the Division
increased nearly 40 percent (193 to 268) from 2000 to 2004, the
percentage of women at the graduate level has declined, from
28 to 23 percent. It is important to note that the greatest drop
in the number of female students occurred in a single year
(2000–2001) and is related to a national trend of fewer individuals pursuing computer science degrees. Following that drop,
the percentage of women in our graduate student population
has consistently remained around 22–23 percent from 2001
to 2004. In the same period, DEAS has enrolled an increasing
number of foreign nationals, and despite a light drop in 2004
due to the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 initiatives, they now
make up over 40 percent of the graduate population. While the
percentage of minorities has remained under 20 percent, the
Admissions Ofﬁce has been active in trying to attract a more
ethnically diverse application pool through targeted outreach.
Within speciﬁc degree areas, the trends are mixed; most notable
are the drop from 28 percent to 16 percent in the number of female computer science graduate students (which contributed
to the overall drop in the number of female students), and the
increase in the number of women in applied physics, which
more than tripled.
National trends. The Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN) reports that the ethnic and gender
proﬁles of both the undergraduate and graduate student populations in engineering sciences have remained mixed over the
past several years (based on data covering 1999 to 2003); what’s
most notable is that there have been relatively few gains or
Challenges for undergrad computer science
A commonly held perception is that a more diverse faculty will lead to a more diverse student body. DEAS has
had some recent successes, particularly in the area of
computer science. In 2003 two new female faculty members were hired. Women now represent 18 percent of
the total DEAS CS faculty, more than double the national
average of 8.6 percent. Despite this success, there has
been a decline in the overall number of undergraduate
computer science concentrators (especially female), in
the nation as well as at Harvard (see Chart 8 below).
“The biggest challenge we face in computer science is
simply low numbers,” says Associate Dean for Computer
Science and Engineering Margo I. Seltzer. “We have to
break that cycle if we want to make any progress.”
Breaking the cycle, however, is as much of a qualitative
as it is a quantitative issue. “I think anyone, male or
female, feels better if they see other people who are like
them,” says Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Mema Roussopoulos. “It is especially hard for a female
student if her classmates say, ‘Hey, you are the only
woman in this class!’”
Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences
and Dean of Science at the Radcliffe Institute, suggests
that part of the solution may involve changing perceptions. “Making the teamwork orientation of CS courses
and projects more visible and talking about the opportunities for students to do research with faculty will help
increase not only the number of women but also the
overall number of concentrators,” she says.
While the challenges ahead are difﬁcult, Seltzer, a Division alum, wants to focus on the positive. A key ﬁrst step
is ﬁnding out why potential computer science concentrators end up dropping out or, more important, why some
students never consider concentrating or taking classes
in the ﬁrst place. “Once students are in the Division,
they seem to really like it,” she says.
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Success at the Division has been deﬁned by students’ and
faculty members’ willingness to draw on knowledge and expertise in diverse ﬁelds. DEAS is in an ideal position to extend
the concept of “renaissance engineering” to support a range
of teaching, learning, and mentorship methodologies. While
this issue has garnered increasing attention in recent months,
it is not a new concern; it has challenged the ﬁeld for decades.
Creating and maintaining a welcoming environment for all
faculty and students is an essential part of a longer-term mission to grow and expand efforts in engineering and the applied
sciences throughout Harvard.
avavavavavavavavavavavavavav
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major declines for any given population during this period
The Computing Research Association (CRA) and National
Science Foundation (NSF) reported that total undergraduate
enrollments in computer science have dropped more than
25 percent since 2001. Data on ethnicity remains mixed, with
no noticeable trends. A similar decline is apparent among the
number of individuals receiving Ph.D.s in computer science,
and the ethnic makeup has remained relatively constant over
the same period.
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 3
Crosscurrents
Social and intellectual collaboration
Crosscurrents
Ongoing and recent efforts at the Division
As part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, students have an opportunity to join dozens
of organizations that support a wide range of interests, from the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Students Association to the Harvard Society of Black Scientists and Engineers.
1 Advising, mentoring, and educational programs
With the 2004 addition of Assistant Dean for Academic Programs Dr. Marie
Dahleh, DEAS is in a better position to offer increased levels of support to all
students. Dr. Dahleh is devising a comprehensive plan to assess all aspects of the
Division’s undergraduate programs, recruitment efforts, and quality of learning. In
addition to a lead role for DEAS in representing engineering and applied sciences
in the College’s curriculum review, tentative plans include offering new types
of courses designed to be of interest to a wider population of Harvard students.
Already, through Dahleh’s guidance, the University has become a member of
MentorNet, an online program that provides guidance for women in the sciences.
Alums are encouraged to join; contact [email protected].
Dr. Kathryn Hollar is the Director of Educational Programs, overseeing an effort
that extends beyond DEAS and provides outreach to the Cambridge-area K–12
student populations. Programs such as GK–12 and Project TEACH expose DEAS
graduate students to diverse student populations, provide a resource for local
teachers who want to teach engineering and applied sciences, and allow juniorhigh and high-school students to link up with potential role models. Those two
programs, along with the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program,
designed to offer research experience to undergraduates from across the country,
bring a diverse group of students to DEAS each year. One sign of success: Several
REU students have been accepted to Ph.D. programs at the Division this year.
2 Support and social groups
Women in Science at Harvard-Radcliffe (WISHR) and the related Women in
Computer Science (WICS) are devoted to fostering a sense of community among
women engaged in science and computer science at Harvard College. In addition,
the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Racial Relations sponsors events for
the entire Harvard community, and the W.E.B. du Bois Graduate Society caters to
supporting ethnic groups among the graduate student population.
3 Scholarships
The Dean’s Ofﬁce announced the ﬁrst annual Innovation Fellowship this past
spring. Fellowships of $15,000 will be given each year to help attract and retain
the best and the brightest applicants.
FURTHER READING
Selected articles related to women in
science and engineering at Harvard:
“Summers: Women in Science”
Harvard Crimson, April 18, 2005
www.thecrimson.com/
article.aspx?ref=506949
“Sciences Struggle to Draw Women”
Harvard Crimson, December 17, 2004
www.thecrimson.com/
article.aspx?ref=505150
Feature from Harvard Magazine
www.harvardmagazine.com/features/
february15.html
For a broader view of undergraduate
life and education, including diversity
on campus, mentoring, and teaching
science and engineering at Harvard,
see:
Making the Most of College: Students
Speak Their Minds, by Richard Light
(Harvard University Press, 2001)
RESOURCES
The following resources offer comprehensive national data and statistics
on enrollment and graduation trends
among undergraduates and graduates
in engineering and computer science,
as well as information about current
and past faculty makeup and hiring/
promotion trends in these areas. Most
of the information is freely available.
National Science Foundation
www.nsf.gov/statistics/
Computing Research Association
www.cra.org
The American Society for
Engineering Education
www.asee.org
4 Task forces
The President’s Ofﬁce recently created two related task forces: the University
Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering, chaired by DEAS’s own Barbara
J. Grosz, and the University Task Force on Women Faculty, chaired by Evelynn
M. Hammonds, Professor of the History of Science and of African and African
American Studies.
Looking forward
DEAS is evolving to meet the challenges facing the University and society. Sustaining
diversity is part of that evolution; it must be carefully integrated into all aspects of
the current planning process. The greatest challenges are treating the issue thoughtfully and sensitively, and realizing that a robust solution will not be centered on one
institution or in one area of education. We will continue to keep you informed on
issues of diversity through our newsletter, Web site, and other materials. Your feedback and input ([email protected]) are welcome and encouraged. J
4 I DEAS – Spring 2005
Marie Dahleh serves as the Assistant
Dean for Academic Programs at DEAS.
Mixing metaphors
E
veryone’s familiar with this common pattern of pixels:
the computer desktop wastebasket. You might believe
that dragging a ﬁle into the virtual trash bin makes it vanish,
but since the “trashed” data is not immediately deleted, a more
accurate metaphor would involve going into a library, taking a
book’s card out of the card catalog and throwing it away, then
pretending that the book had disappeared from the shelf.
“The metaphorical world of information devices has proven so
successful that people are freed from having to understand the
technology in order to make the devices work,” says Harvard
College Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer
Science Harry Lewis. “The problem is when people begin to
believe the metaphors. In some sense, [the metaphors] have
been too successful.” We have, in modern parlance, entered
the Matrix.
Harvard cybercitizens have two ways of learning the truth, and
Lewis serves as the University’s version of Morpheus (pill-free,
of course). Students can delve into his new core course, QR 48:
Bits, or they can ﬁnd out the truth the hard way, as starlet Paris
Hilton did when a hacker put the contents of her e-address
book on public display.
The course tackles recent and often up-to-the-minute issues,
from privacy and security to cryptography and terrorism,
but Lewis created QR 48 as a response to his own awareness
of how technology had transformed during his eight years
(1995–2003) as Dean of the College. “When I went into University Hall, computing was the important thing, and when I
came out, information was,” he says.
Courtesy of Moore’s Law and the cabling of the world with
ﬁber-optic lines, every nanosecond billions of bits are now
seamlessly moved, stored, and accessed on the cheap. Never
one to miss a good metaphor, Lewis suggests thinking of
information as food. “We
consume it all the time; there
are different varieties, ways
of preparing it and serving it
that may come as a complete
surprise,” he explains. In
other words, it’s a 24-hour
buffet for anyone with a
port, and the sneeze guard is
looking a bit murky.
Divided neatly into four segments (information as stuff,
privacy, communication, and intellectual property), QR 48
equips those who will determine policies, whether as legislators, corporate leaders, or ordinary citizens, with a foundational knowledge of the social and technological choices that
lie ahead. Even without a heavy math focus, the course hits
students with the healthy dose of hard science they are likely
to need, including the fundamentals of cryptography, a review
of Shannon’s information theory, and a lesson on the electromagnetic spectrum and how it is used.
To cover such a wide range of material, Lewis calls on a colleague at MIT, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Hal Abelson, to co-teach the course. He also leans on some
amazing guest lecturers, such as William Crowell, security
expert and former deputy director of the National Security
Agency; and John Perry Barlow, former lyricist of the Grateful
Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
one of the most inﬂuential advocacy groups in cyberspace.
Even as the instructors balance so many concepts (in addition
to teaching and research, Lewis himself is writing two books,
one about his deanship and the other based on the course),
students are not left without guidance.
Lewis, who, in tweed jacket and pink pinstripes with crimson
tie, looks like the classic avatar of a Harvard College professor, keeps the undergraduates focused using a series of what
he calls “bit koans.” The one that starts the course also serves
as a ﬁtting conclusion: “Data and information are different.
Neither is the same as truth.” The man famous for his essay
telling incoming students how to get more out of Harvard by
doing less cannot stop the dizzying pace of information ﬂow,
but he is well positioned to provide the tools to keep future
graduates a few steps, or bits, ahead. J
To learn more and to watch video lectures, visit
www.eecs.harvard.edu/qr48
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 5
Crosscurrents
Professor Harry Lewis asks
students to “enter the Matrix”
in his new course, QR 48: Bits.
(Lewis was brave enough to
admit that he has yet to see
the Matrix trilogy. A boxed set
of the movies, a black leather
coat, and a pair of mirror
shades are on order.)
Faculty News
John H. Van Vleck (left), Harvard Dean of Engineering and Applied Physics from 1951–1957 and new arrival Jenny Hoffman (right), Assistant
Professor of Physics. The formula for yttrium barium copper oxide is in the background.
Collaborations
Traversing physics and applied sciences
“Joining Cruft Laboratory to Pierce Hall is an aerial structure
known unofﬁcially as the Van Vleck Bridge. Traversing it, we are
reminded that it was Van himself who served in the crucial years
as the bridge between physics and applied sciences at Harvard.
In that ﬁgurative sense, Van Vleck bridges stand out as landmarks
in 20th-century Harvard and 20th-century physics.”
— Edward M. Purcell, remarks at a memorial for John
Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Harvard Dean of Engineering
and Applied Physics, 1951–57
N
ature magazine (433:179) ran an editorial proclaiming:
“Einstein is dead. Until its next revolution, much of the
glory of physics will be in engineering. It is a shame that the
physicists who do so much of it keep so quiet about it.”
John Huth, Chairman of the Physics Department, begs to differ,
as would anyone who took a stroll over the bridge that links
Pierce and Cruft halls. The dimly lit chute, ﬂanked with ofﬁces
on either side, is far from quiet in either direction and provides
the best (and never silent) view of the construction of the
Laboratory for Integrated Sciences Engineering (LISE) building.
“The assumption of the writer is that there is a dividing line
between engineering and physics,” says Huth, with several
counterexamples at the ready. “We can take the example of
superconductivity or MRI [fostered in part at Harvard by
Nobel Prize winner Edward Purcell] or SQUID [superconducting quantum interference device]. These all originated as some
basic physics but metamorphosed into engineering.”
Historically and increasingly today, the Physics Department
shares a particularly close intellectual relationship with
the Division, where crosscutting research in computational
physics, electrical engineering, and nanotechnology is ongoing—from Eric Mazur’s work on nanowires to Federico
Capasso’s work on the Quantum Cascade and Raman lasers
and Jene Golovchenko’s investigations of nanopores, useful
for detecting single molecules.
Come fall 2005, the Division will boast 15 joint faculty appointments (14 senior and 1 junior) with Physics. In addition,
researchers have long shared facilities, such as the Harvard Cen-
6 I DEAS – Spring 2005
ter for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), and equally taken advantage
of the two NSF-funded research centers, NSEC and MRSEC. The
“me casa es su casa” attitude will extend to new physics faculty
member Jenny Hoffman, whose work focuses on how electrons
behave in novel materials. Her future lab will reside comfortably on the “other side,” in the basement of Pierce Hall.
“One of our group’s initial projects will be the construction of
a low-temperature, high–magnetic ﬁeld, scanning tunneling
microscope, to investigate the ﬁeld-dependent properties of
vortices in high-temperature superconductors,” she says. Hoffman plans to use her imaging technology to investigate how
various types of crystal defects may pin the vortices in place in
yttrium barium copper oxide–coated conductors (critical for
developing small, lightweight power systems).
Despite the emphasis on technology, Huth is a great fan of
pure physics and admires Einstein, even if he did get some
things “wrong,” such as disputing the nature of measurement
in quantum mechanics or, for a long time, refusing to acknowledge the existence of the strong interaction as a fundamental
force. The famed theorist certainly deserves his place and his
100 candles, but the future also looks bright.
“In ‘non-engineering’ physics, we have the success of a uniﬁed
model of the weak and electromagnetic interactions. Moreover,
where the origins of mass and symmetry are breaking—something we don’t understand—is about to be probed by the Large
Hadron Collider. The discovery of ‘dark energy’ has presented
us with a huge mystery that points to a new kind of physics
that was totally unexpected,” Huth explains. In short, the
physics revolution, especially with the “glorious” potential of
using a physics-based approach to tackle biological questions,
is far from over.
Van Vleck, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for pioneering the application of quantum mechanics to the study of
magnetism, would no doubt be pleased. His own work led to
many engineering advances in radioastronomy, microwave
spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance. The conversations
between the two areas are likely to remain loud and clear for
years to come at Harvard. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the
current Dean of the Division and of Physical Sciences has a
B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D., all in experimental physics. J
For more, see
www.physics.harvard.edu
www.hno.harvard.edu/guide/faculty/fac6.html
Faculty News
Links and nodes
The art (and electronics) of publishing
“We combined a working engineer’s pragmatic
approach to design with a teacher’s approach to
conveying that kind of know-how. Electronic
design is best seen as an enabling part of scientiﬁc
research,” says Winﬁeld Hill. “In other words,”
continues Paul Horowitz, “this was not a book
written by two professors retelling what they
learned from their professors.”
I
t’s rare for any book to get fan mail. It’s almost unthinkable when the tome in question weighs in at 1,000-plus
pages, unabashedly offers equations and circuit diagrams, and
deﬁnitely comes with homework. But mention the title, The
Art of Electronics, to any physicist or engineer and they will
likely proclaim, “Well, that’s not surprising at all!” The classic
silver and black doorstop and favorite line-item entry of its
publisher’s CFO will likely grace shelves for decades to come.
Nothing captures the devotion many feel toward the book better than a reader’s comment: “Your book is a crown jewel in the
branch of electronics literature. It is my recreation, reading it
in free evenings.” The book’s authors, Paul Horowitz, Professor
of Physics and of Electrical Engineering, and Winﬁeld Hill,
Director of Electronics Engineering at the Rowland Institute
at Harvard, never anticipated that such success (and a large fan
base) would come from a pile of photocopied pen-and-ink lecture notes bound together with an overstretched rubber band.
The Art of Electronics came to life as part of Physics 123, a 1974
Harvard course started by Horowitz. With the aid of Hill, the
Winﬁeld Hill (left) and Paul Horowitz (right), among international
versions of their book, look forward to completing their third edition.
course was transformed in a text that captured their intuitive
“back-of-the-envelope” approach to electronic design. This
newly created text proved popular with students, even in its
unwieldy draft form. After the requisite rejection by several
book editors (who are no doubt wondering how they missed
a hit), Cambridge University Press eventually converted the
pack of papers into a smoothly bound, shiny hardback.
The secret to the book’s success might be the homespun style
that provides the patient reader with some unexpected humor.
Here’s a typical passage: “This example illustrates a frequent
designer’s quandary, namely a choice between a complicated
circuit that meets the strict worst-case design criterion, and is
therefore guaranteed to work, and a simple circuit that doesn’t
meet worst-case speciﬁcations, but is overwhelmingly likely
to function without problems. There are times when you will
ﬁnd yourself choosing the latter, ignoring the little voice
whispering into your ear.”
It was good foresight for the authors, and for all their future
readers and fans, that they did listen to their own little voices
when it came to creating the book. The text has gone on to
another edition, enjoyed record sales of a million copies worldwide, and been translated into eight languages. Perhaps more
impressive, The Art of Electronics has changed how students
learn about electronics and how faculty teach the course. The
next time someone says they are going to curl up with a good
book, don’t be surprised if it comes with equations. J
For more information on the book, the authors, and
some outlandish uses for the volume, check out
www.artofelectronics.com/
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 7
Faculty News
Awards
Foundational research …
Navin Khaneja has been
granted a Friedrich Wilhelm
Bessel Research Award,
which recognizes “young,
top-ﬂight scientists and
scholars from abroad who
are already recognized as
outstanding researchers in
their ﬁelds” … Open boundaries … Division collaborator George Whitesides has
been named a member of
the National Academy of
Engineering and, with MIT’s
Robert Langer and C.N.R.
Rao of the Nehru Center
for Fundamental Research
in Bangalore, India, has
won the Dan David Prize
for Future Dimensions
in Materials Science …
Quantum creativity …
Federico Capasso has
been co-awarded one
of the 2005 King Faisal
International Prizes (KFIP)
for Science (Physics). He
shares the prize with Frank
Wilczek (MIT) and Anton
Zeilinger (University of
Vienna). The King Faisal
Foundation called Capasso
one “of the most creative
and inﬂuential physicists in
the world, having achieved
international recognition
through his design and
demonstration of the
Quantum Cascade laser”
… Career move … Mema
Roussopoulos and David
Brooks have both been
awarded NSF CAREER
Nota bene
Earth man … Scot Martin,
who is “using the tools of
chemistry to shed light
on how natural processes
interact with human activities to affect the environment,” was proﬁled in the
March 17, 2005, Harvard
Gazette … Memorial Minute
… A Memorial Minute on
the passing of Harold A.
Thomas Jr., former Gordon
McKay Professor of Civil
and Sanitary Engineering,
Scot Martin’s research has
global reach.
Professor of Applied Physics
David A. Weitz
was published in the March
3, 2005 Harvard Gazette …
Iron chef … David A. Weitz
was quoted in a February
25, 2005 Washington
Times article about edible
nanotechnology. “The
challenge for edible nanotechnology developers—in
terms of the substances
ﬁnding widespread commercial use in food—lies
in building capsules
‘robust enough to stand
whatever processing they
go through, and will yet
grants for their research.
In her paper, “Reliable
Peer-to-Peer Data Preservation,” Roussopoulos
outlined a peer-to-peer
digital preservation system
called LOCKSS (Lots of
Copies Keep Stuff Safe), a
tool librarians can use to
preserve long-term access
to content published on
the Web. The system is
currently being deployed at
about 100 libraries around
the world. Brooks was cited
for work on embedded
computing and power
issues. The NSF CAREER
program recognizes and
supports the early career
development activities of
those teacher-scholars who
are most likely to become
the academic leaders of the
21st century … Peer review
… The Division’s Michael
J. Aziz, has been awarded
the distinction of American
Association for the
Advancement of Science
(AAAS) Fellow. J
release the active agents
whenever you eat them,’
said materials scientist
David Weitz of Harvard University,” states the article.
Weitz is part of the Kraft
Foods NanoteK Consortium,
a group of researchers
dedicated to exploring
food technology … Fast
break … Essential Science
Indicators has an interview
with Daniel J. Jacob. His
“fast-breaking” (i.e., highly
cited) paper in the ﬁeld
of geosciences provides
an overview of the use of
aircraft measurements to
verify emission inventories
of environmentally important species from a large
continental source region.
Jacob says, “Such veriﬁcation of emissions, leading
to better understanding
of emission processes, is
of crucial importance for
the development of future
international environmental
agreements” … Why? …
A Boston Globe editorial
writer, so intrigued by L.
Mahadevan’s approach to
research, was inspired to
write a lead op-ed piece
about how “scientiﬁc
curiosity can be its own
reward.” On February 2,
2005, the editorialist wrote,
“[Mahadevan’s] philosophy
should be inspiration to
educators seeking to
ignite young minds, and to
anyone who wants to keep
his or her own gray matter
nourished. Seeking an
understanding of everything—from a strange plant
in a pot to the outermost
dust in the cosmos—is
the zest of science, and
the best way to meet
Assistant Professor of
Computer Science
Mema Roussopoulos
A nano change … The Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures
(CIMS) has ofﬁcially changed its name to the Center for Nanoscale
Systems (CNS) as of April 4, 2005. The missions and goals of the
Center have not changed. The new name is more descriptive and
puts an emphasis on the concept of the fabrication and construction of nanoscale systems. For more, see
http://cns.fas.harvard.edu
8 I DEAS – Spring 2005
the challenge of living” …
Better shoes … Mahadevan
was also appointed the
Schlumberger Visiting
Professor of Mathematics
at Oxford University, the
ﬁrst holder of such a post
in mathematics there. He
says, “On my ﬁrst visit
this summer we worked
on designing a better
shoe, a physical model for
gene therapy that involves
designing viruses that can
beat the immune system,
and the mathematics of
drapes, textiles, and ropes”
… The apprentice … The
February 2005 issue of Scientiﬁc American highlights
the path from concept to
company at Harvard. It all
started when “Charles M.
Lieber, a major ﬁgure in
nanotechnology, asked one
of his graduate students,
Thomas Rueckes, in 1998
to undertake the design
of a radically new type of
computer memory” and
eventually led to the invention of the NRAM (made
from nanotubes) and a new
company, Nantero, Inc. …
Former graduate student
Thomas Rueckes helped found
Nantero, Inc. a company using
carbon nanotubes to develop
next-generation semiconductor
devices like new types of RAM.
Faculty News
Professor of Applied
Mathematics and
Mechanics L. Mahadevan
Two top picks … Technology
Research News’ list of top
advances for 2004 included
advances in biotechnology
and computer security
developed at Harvard: a
nanowire-based biochip
developed by Harvard
University researchers that
detects single viruses, and
the implementation of a
six-node quantum cryptography network designed
to operate continuously to
provide a way to exchange
secure keys among BBN
Technologies, Harvard, and
Boston University … The
nanosphere and beyond
… The January/February
2005 issue of Harvard
Magazine explores the
“nanoscientists’ weird
world,” featuring proﬁles of
Federico Capasso, Robert
Westervelt, Charles Marcus,
Charles Lieber, and George
Whitesides. The same issue
also notes the work of
biomedical engineer David
Edwards, in an article on
the new Harvard Initiative
for Global Health … Potent
quote … Dean Venky was
quoted in the February 16,
2005, issue of the Boston
Globe in a piece about the
new Biological Engineering
course at MIT, saying, “This
is a time of integration” …
Quotas in context … The
Division’s Fred Abernathy
and the Kennedy School’s
David Weil spoke at the
National Press Club on
December 16, 2004,
about the outlook for U.S.
manufacturers, in light
of the end of quotas on
apparel and textile exports
from most of the rest of
the world at the start of
2005. Abernathy and Weil,
both PIs at the Harvard
Center for Textile and
Apparel Research, also
wrote an editorial, “Apparel
Apocalypse?” that appeared
in the Washington Post
… Sixth sense … CNET
reported that a group of
With the end of quotas,
low-cost apparel has begun
to ﬂood the market.
Boston-area academics,
including members of the
Division, is stepping up
efforts to commercialize an
experimental technology
aimed at giving computer
networks powerful new
surveillance capabilities
… Measure by measure
… Robert Westervelt is
quoted in the November
19, 2004, issue of Science,
in an article about how “researchers are exploiting the
oddities of the nanoworld
to make new measuring
devices” … 40-40 vision …
For IEEE Spectrum’s 40th
anniversary issue, Harvard
researchers Federico
Capasso and George Whitesides, along with 38 other
leading thinkers from the
science and engineering
world, were asked to gaze
out over the technology
landscape and describe
In IEEE Spectrum’s 40th
anniversary issue, leading
thinkers from the science
and engineering world gaze
out over the technology
landscape and offer
insights about the future.
what they see … Exemplary
engineering … John W.
Hutchinson will receive an
honorary degree of doctor
of engineering from the
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. “His
scholarly work in three
different branches of the
mechanics of solids has
contributed to shaping
this ﬁeld of research for a
generation,” wrote nominator L. Ben Freund of Brown
University. “His professional leadership has been
exemplary. His abilities as
an educator/mentor are
most in evidence through
his former graduate
students, who are forging
distinguished careers for
themselves at Illinois,
Brown, Harvard, and many
other universities, companies, and laboratories
in the U.S. and abroad.”
Hutchinson is a member
of the National Academy
of Sciences, the National
Academy of Engineering,
and the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. J
Professor of Engineering
John Hutchinson
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 9
In Medias Res
Selected articles about
the Division
Federico Capasso (left) ,
and Mariano Troccoli (right)
hope their work on the
Raman injection laser will
lead to a new generation
of “tuneable” compact lasers
that can operate at almost
any wavelength of the
invisible light spectrum,
including the Terahertz
range.
“Plug and play” laser
packs a punch
Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace
Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton
Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering, and his colleagues have
demonstrated the feasibility of a new
type of plug-in laser that could lay the
groundwork for wide-ranging security
applications. As reported in the February
24, 2005 issue of Nature, their invention
of the Raman injection laser combines
the advantages of nonlinear optical devices and semiconductor injection lasers
with a compact “plug and play” design.
“While our paper merely demonstrates
proof of concept, one day it may lead
to the sort of security experts dream of
having: a portable device that you could
use to detect things like weapons or
explosives, simply by shining an invisible light to see what someone might be
hiding,” says Capasso. “The work also
represents an important advance in
quantum design, since we are now able
to engineer, from the bottom up, a new
Raman material and laser and tailor its
property for a given application.”
Conventional Raman lasers depend on
a fundamental phenomenon in physics
called the Raman effect. When light
from an intense laser beam, known as
the “pump,” deﬂects off the molecules of
certain materials, some of the incident
photons lose part of their energy. As a
result, a secondary laser beam, with a
frequency shifted from that of the ﬁrst,
emerges from the material. By combin-
10 I DEAS – Spring 2005
ing the power source
and the Raman material,
literally creating a laser
within a laser, the team
has created the ﬁrst current-driven
Raman laser. Because the pump laser is
now self-generated, the device is highly
efﬁcient, reducing the standard decline
that happens when an external power
source is used.
Capasso’s co-authors included the
Division’s Mariano Troccoli and Ertugrul Cubukcu, Alexey Belyanin of
Texas A&M University, and Deborah
L. Sivco and Alfred Y. Cho, both of Bell
Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. The
work was partially supported by the
Texas A&M Telecommunications and
Informatics Task Force Initiative.
Adapted from a February 25, 2005, press release
prepared by the DEAS and Faculty of Arts and
Sciences Ofﬁces of Communications.
Related articles appeared in Science, the Harvard
Gazette, Texas A&M News Ofﬁce releases, Photonics.com, and Optics.org.
How the Venus ﬂytrap
snaps up its prey
L. Mahadevan, Gordon McKay Professor
of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics
at the Division and afﬁliate in the Department of Organismic and Evolution-
ary Biology, with former students and
postdocs Yoel Forterre (Université de
Provence), Jan M. Skotheim (Cambridge
University and Harvard), and Jacques
Dumais (Harvard), reported in the January 27, 2005, issue of Nature how the Venus ﬂytrap snaps up its prey in a mere
tenth of a second by actively shifting the
curved shape of its mouth like leaves.
To trap its prey, the carnivorous plant
relies on both an active biochemical
and a passive elastic process. When an
insect brushes up against a hair trigger,
the plant responds by moving water
to actively change the curvature of its
leaves. “In essence, a leaf stretches until
reaching a point of instability, where it
can no longer maintain the strain,” Mahadevan says. “Like releasing a reversed
plastic lid or part of a cut tennis ball,
each leaf folds back in on itself, and in
the process of returning to its original
shape, ensnares the victim in the
middle. The hydrated nature of the leaf
quickly dampens the vibrations caused
by the movement, so the unlucky bug
doesn’t spill out. It then takes the plant
up to eight hours to ready its leaves for
the next unsuspecting bug.”
One day, engineers might be able to
emulate the plant’s ingenious alternative to muscle-powered movements in
tiny artiﬁcial devices, such as those that
control the ﬂow of minute amounts
of liquids or gases. Common applications that already use related technology include valves and switches in
microﬂuidic devices, hydraulic sensors
and actuators, and timed-release drugdelivery mechanisms.
Related media stories appeared in the Boston
Globe, New Scientist, Scientiﬁc American, the
Los Angeles Times, Popular Mechanics, and the
New York Times. NPR produced a radio story on
the research. Future stories are slated to appear in
Boys’ Life and on the Discovery Channel. Videos
To reveal how
the Venus ﬂytrap
snaps, L. Mahadevan and colleagues
painted ultraviolet
ﬂuorescent dots on
the external face
of the leaves and
ﬁlmed them under
ultraviolet light
using high-speed
video.
Loretta Mickley and
colleagues found
that a warming globe
could stiﬂe summer’s
cleansing winds across
the Northeast and
Midwest over the next
50 years, signiﬁcantly
worsening air pollution
in these regions.
Seeing the real world
By mining direct recordings of neuronal
activity in live animals as they viewed
natural scenes, Garrett B. Stanley, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering,
and graduate student Nicholas A. Lesica
have developed a more realistic model
of how the brain encodes real-world visual information. The work, published
as a cover story in the November 24,
2004, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience,
could help move scientists beyond
artiﬁcial visual stimuli typically used
in experiments—such as spots, bars, or
sine waves—to a better understanding
of how the brain processes dynamic
objects such as trees swaying, cars
speeding by, or joggers stretching.
The scientists used snippets from
movies of common scenes to pinpoint
the pattern and sequence of neuronal
ﬁrings in the lateral geniculate nucleus
(LGN), a layered structure in the brain’s
thalamus with cells that respond to form
and motion. In the future, with a better
understanding of how the brain encodes
everyday scenes, engineers might be able
to artiﬁcially trigger a visual response or
experience by sending such data from a
computer through a device that directly
interfaces with the brain.
Adapted from a December 13, 2004, press release
prepared by the DEAS Ofﬁce of Communications.
Pollution gets a
warm reception
A warming globe could stiﬂe summer’s
cleansing winds across the northeastern
and midwestern United States over the
next 50 years, signiﬁcantly worsening
air pollution in these regions, says Loretta J. Mickley, a research associate at
the Division. Her ﬁndings, reported in
February at the annual meeting of the
AAAS in Washington, D.C., are based
on modeling the impact of increasing
greenhouse gas concentrations on pollution events across the United States
through 2050.
(Courtesy of staff
photograher Kris
Snibbe, Harvard
News Ofﬁce)
Using this model, Mickley and colleagues found that the frequency of
cold fronts bringing cool, clear air out
of Canada during the summer months
declined about 20 percent. These cold
fronts, Mickley said, are responsible for
breaking up hot, stagnant air that builds
up regularly in the summer, generating
increased levels of ground-level ozone
pollution. Mickley’s collaborators included Daniel J. Jacob and B. D. Field at
Harvard, and D. Rind of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Their work was
funded by a Science To Achieve Results
(STAR) research grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Related media stories appeared in the Boston
Globe and on CNN. Mickley was also interviewed
by CBS Radio.
Adapted from a February 19, 2005, press release
prepared by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Ofﬁce
of Communications.
Waiting to exhale
Some individuals exhale many more
pathogen-laden droplets than others
in the course of ordinary breathing,
scientists have found, but oral administration of a safe saline spray every six
hours might slash exhalation of germs
in this group by an average of 72 percent. The researchers, including David
A. Edwards, Gordon McKay Professor of
the Practice of Biomedical Engineering,
and biotechnology ﬁrms Pulmatrix and
Inamed, reported results from their
clinical study in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. Their work
may help decrease the spread of bacteria and viruses responsible for airborne
infectious diseases such as inﬂuenza,
tuberculosis, and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
Edwards and his co-authors concluded
that roughly half the population—
6 of 11 individuals in their study—may
produce more than 98 percent of all
potentially pathogenic bioaerosols. The
researchers found that a six-minute
inhalation of aerosolized saltwater
solution, often used in the treatment
of asthma, can markedly reduce the
number of bioaerosol particles exhaled
by these “high producers” for up to six
hours. Using a cough machine designed
to simulate normal human breathing,
they linked the reduction in droplet exhalation after saline administration to
increased surface tension among ﬂuids
lining human airways, producing larger
droplets that are less likely to remain
airborne and exit through the mouth.
Related stories appeared on the Reuters, AP,
and Bloomberg wire services as well as the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and CNN.
A Webcast video story appeared on ScienCentral,
and WHDH-TV (Channel 7, Boston) created a
feature story.
Adapted from a Faculty of Arts and Sciences
press release and a Harvard Gazette story,
November 29, 2004. J
David Edwards and his co-authors’
ﬁndings could dampen the contagiousness
of individuals most likely to spread
airborne germs when sick, and allow
everyone to breathe a bit easier.
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 11
In Medias Res
and additional images of the plant in action are
available online at www.deas.harvard.edu/research/Venusﬂytrap.html.
Adapted from a January 26, 2005, press release
prepared by the DEAS and Faculty of Arts and
Sciences Ofﬁces of Communications.
Student News
The racing circuit
Elaine Ou, a G2 Computer Science Ph.D. student, designs
high-speed circuits for use in fault-tolerant memory as part
of the Harvard VLSI Group, led by Professor of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science Woody Yang. She’s also
dedicated to exploring a different type of circuit, where
speed is calculated in miles per hour (often up to 180), not in
megahertz, and when a burning smell is a sign of success,
not system failure. Here Elaine writes about the thrill of
building cool stuff, the stress-reducing beneﬁts of motorcycle
racing, and how her other hobby keeps her well grounded.
W
hen it comes right down to it, all I really want to do is
build cool stuff. My medium of choice just happens to
be digital circuitry. I recently helped design an error-correcting code that’s suitable for different types of semiconductor
memory, like those used in USB Flash drives.
Right now, there isn’t any form of error correction, so after
manufacturing, 30–50 percent of the development cost goes
into testing the memory to make sure all of it works. As an
alternative, I am proposing a high-speed circuit (patent
pending) that can perform error correction on demand with
minimal latency.
Some of the things I do when I’m “neglecting” my schoolwork
are ride my motorcycles (I am racing this season!) and ﬂy
airplanes (I am hoping to obtain my IFR [instrument ﬂight
rules] and commercial ratings, and have future plans to build
my own plane).
What’s racing a bike like? Traveling at nearly 200 mph, it is
hard to think about anything else, so I ﬁnd it a great way to
12 I DEAS – Spring 2005
CS graduate student Elaine Ou hits the roadways (above)
and the airways (below).
release stress. The feeling is really hard to describe; it’s purely
interactive and deﬁnitely gives you an adrenaline rush.
My other hobby, ﬂying, offers a completely different, and much
more technical, experience. It’s closer to doing engineering: If
anything is a little bit off, the entire system can fail. In short,
you don’t want to get an adrenaline rush when you’re in the air,
since that probably means you are going to have a problem!
Of course, my parents disapprove of both my hobbies—and
after cracking three motorcycle helmets (and there’s only one
sureﬁre way to do that!) in less than a year, I understand their
concern. But over time I’ll get better at performing my own
form of error correction. At the very least, I’m now highly motivated to save money on gear—I have that plane to buy. J
Strong friction
Here’s a quick look at recent two student-oriented visits at
DEAS given by industry professionals.
Future bodybuilders may one day lift and curl more safely
thanks to a device (below) with as much brains as brawn. For
his Senior Design Project, Jonas Corl ’05 designed a prototype
for a strength-training machine that dissipates stored energy
(created when a user lifts a weight) into friction. In standard
devices, if a user suffers an injury during a repetition, the
stored energy has nowhere to go except back into the body, potentially increasing the damage. J
Cisco Systems, Inc.
St. Patrick’s Day at the Division featured green motherboards
of a sort. Chief Technology Ofﬁcer and Senior Vice President
of Cisco Systems Charlie Giancarlo, who received his M.B.A. at
Harvard Business School, visited that day to meet with faculty
and to talk with and recruit Harvard students.
Samsung Electronics Company, Ltd.
In conjunction with the Business School, the Division welcomed Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, President and CEO of Samsung.
To help participants remember to attend, the company offered
free 256 MB USB Flash memory sticks. The promo worked a
little too well, given the 800 students who packed the Burden
Auditorium. In addition to meeting with Division and HBS
faculty, Dr. Hwang, an IEEE Fellow, discussed “DigitAll,” the
company’s new strategy that uses advances in semiconductor
technology to create a mobile society. J
Awards
Harvard College senior Yi
Liu ’05 has been awarded
the 2004 Colonel and Mrs.
S. S. Dennis III Scholarship in recognition of her
hard work and dedication
to research. Ms. Liu, a
2005 candidate for the S.B.
degree in Engineering Sciences (honors biomedical
track), was born in Wuxi,
China. She came to the
United States when she
was six years old, attended
St. Andrew’s School in
Delaware, and now resides
in Arlington, Texas. Ms.
Liu’s academic interests are
wide ranging, including biomechanics, oceanographic
engineering, and mechanical design. Currently, she
is conducting research
with Robert Howe, Gordon
McKay Professor of Engineering and Director of the
Harvard Biorobotics Lab, on
the material properties of
breast tissue using ﬁniteelement modeling. After
graduation, she will work
as a structural dynamics engineer for Northrop
Grumman, an aerospace
technology ﬁrm in Redondo
Beach, CA. The company
has awarded her a graduate
fellowship that she plans to
use to pursue a master’s
degree in engineering.
...........
Xiaofeng Li, Ph.D. student
in Donhee Ham’s group,
has won the 2005 Analog Devices Outstanding
Student Designer Award in
recognition of his outstanding Ph.D. work, currently
focused on ultrafast quantum circuits using carbon
nanotubes. Mr. Li, who
graduated from Caltech
in 2004, is also the Gold
Medal winner of the 29th
International Physics Olympiad and ranked ﬁrst in the
Boston Area Undergraduate Physics Competition in
2001.
...........
Ya’akov “Kobi” Gal (above
left), who works with
Professor Avi Pfeffer, and
Geoffrey Werner-Allen
(below right), research
assistant to Professor Matt
Welsh, were given teaching
fellow awards.
...........
Two teams—Harvard .*
(comprising Tiankai Liu
’08, Anatoly Preygel ’07,
and Qicheng Ma ’06) and
Harvard 124 (comprising
Timofei Gerasimov ’06, Yan
Zhang ’07, and Alexander “Sasha” Rush ’07),
both part of the Harvard
Computing Contest Club
(HC3)—competed in the
Association for Computing Machinery’s annual
International Collegiate
Programming Contest.
In the Western New England College contest, 124
and .* placed third and
fourth, respectively, snugly
behind MIT in a ﬁeld of
18 teams. Harvard 124
advanced to the regional
competition on November
13, 2004, in Rochester,
New York. After a grueling
11 hours and 27 minutes,
the team solved three
problems out of ﬁve and
placed third overall—a
great performance, but not
good enough for the World
Finals, where last year
a Harvard team came in
ninth. “If anything, [Harvard 124 members] have
garnered excellent experience for use in later contests, and team chemistry
was, as usual, well coordinated throughout the whole
contest,” said the team
reporter, Yan Zhang. J
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 13
Student News
Building networks
In Profile
Slide ruler
Patrick Wolfe, solo artist and collaborative engineer,
makes (and reduces) some noise
C
ambridge, England. Half-past midnight. A cold rain ﬂicks at the club’s
window, distorting the smoky mirage of
a small crowd of jazz listeners settling
into their pints. Tall, lanky, fair-haired,
he readies himself. The crowd does an
initial double-take at his trombone, but
the brass horn, with its extended slide,
gives off a quiet elegance in the dim
light. Gray ﬁgures with drums, bass, and
keys ﬁll out the stage. Cue the sounds of
Casa del Funk.
These days, Patrick Wolfe, who has dual
bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and music from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in engineering from the
University of Cambridge, has a permanent gig as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard. On the ﬁrst
ﬂoor of the Division’s Pierce Hall, a different type of stage—his new audio lab—is
taking shape. Rather than making noise,
Wolfe investigates ways to reduce it and
14 I DEAS – Spring 2005
explores techniques related to recovering lost audio and signal data. His work
is likely to result in applications ranging
from basic scientiﬁc research tools to
improved hearing aids and advances in
speech-recognition software.
“What I really do is signal processing,”
says Wolfe. Although his focus is primarily on audio signals, the broader ﬁeld
covers a range of electrical phenomena
such as radio, biomedical, video, image,
and sonar data. A natural collaborator
who uses his expertise in mathematics
and statistics to inform his research,
he also draws on psychoacoustics, the
relationship between physical stimulus
and perceptual sensation, to develop
statistical models of how we hear.
In particular, he’s looking for better ways
to preserve signal quality, since reducing
static inevitably occurs at the expense
of signal resolution (i.e., quality). Noise
reduction, in an engineering sense, boils
down to the problem of how to best estimate an underlying signal from a noisy
observation. “Given a sequence of data—
say, an old recording of Duke Ellington
that has been damaged [corrupted by
noise, in signal processing terms]—how
can we recreate the closest version of the
original sequence so that a listener cannot tell the difference?” Wolfe asks.
To avoid throwing the signal out with
the static, Wolfe’s trick is to take advantage of what our ears and brains
already do so well: receive and ﬁlter information. The recovered signal needs
to be only as perfect (or imperfect) as
the human auditory system. The key to
achieving clarity involves borrowing
a statistical technique ﬁrst developed
in the 18th century. Classic Bayesian
methodology—a ratio for using what
we already know in order to predict
what will come, named after the Reverend Thomas Bayes—provides a mathematical boost to help restore a signal.
An audio engineer like Wolfe can, in a
principled way, incorporate perceptual
information a priori into a statistical
model when restoring a damaged piece
of music, for example.
In Profile
Wolfe employs a ﬁltering algorithm to reduce noisy signals in audio data such as a damaged Duke Ellington recording.
(From left to right) A representation of the original, damaged recording; the same recording with 40 percent of the signal data dropped;
the ﬁnal, restored (less noisy) recording.
“By incorporating our knowledge of
human hearing into the noise reduction process, we gain a more robust
framework,” explains Wolfe. “The noise
removal algorithms [intelligent pieces
of software that know what to save and
what to throw out] concentrate on removing the most perceptually salient
noise—in other words, what we would
most notice.”
Imagine listening to a damaged CD
that skips every few seconds, but apart
from the skip, plays normally. Compare
that experience to listening to a poorly
recorded analog cassette tape that has a
constant hiss in the background. From
a purely mathematical perspective, the
amount of noise, or “error,” would be
much greater in the tape than in the
CD, which jumps only occasionally. Yet
Wolfe argues that despite the greater
overall error, “You would likely prefer
listening to the less distracting underlying white noise of the tape than the
jarring, if less frequent, CD skip.” Thus,
he takes human preferences—or what’s
called a perceptual cost function—into
consideration when trying to obtain the
most “listenable” restored signal.
Anyone with an MP3 player has already
beneﬁted from a similar approach. To
create a compressed yet high-quality
audio ﬁle, sound engineers reduce the
number of bits needed to represent the
signal. The error caused by what’s missing is made inaudible by the remaining
signal. In return, music listeners can ﬁt
more songs on a player’s internal hard
drive. Wolfe hopes to reﬁne the use of
a similar distilling process to optimally
remove the most perceptually salient
noise when restoring audio data. In this
reverse procedure, the important “bits”
are effectively added back in (or restored) while the din is de-emphasized.
Given his success in mixing disciplines,
Wolfe strongly advocates pursuing re-
search at the border between applied
mathematics and the engineering sciences, combining a strong theoretical
foundation with practical experience.
While he could have gone either way,
engineering or statistics, he felt that
engineering, perhaps because of his
own musical inclinations—the desire
to build and play—was a better ﬁt.
In his case, the highschool marching band
had to ﬁll a slot.
Wolfe jokes that “the chance to join
Harvard is like what they say about the
Maﬁa: It’s an offer you can’t refuse.” In
his case, the combination of the Division and Harvard left him with little
reason to go anywhere else. Even before
he arrived in the summer of 2004, Wolfe
had made strong links with members
of the Statistics Department. He’s now
looking forward to working with the
Statistics faculty to design and teach
a new course in signal processing and
statistics next year—a sign, he says, of
the great way the Division reaches out
across campus.
Links down the hall are also emerging.
When applied mathematician L. Mahadevan realized that Wolfe plays the
trombone, he immediately offered to
ﬁlm him in action with the same highspeed camera he used to capture the
motion of the Venus ﬂytrap. “The basic
longstanding models for how the vocal
tract works are only a small part of the
picture,” says Wolfe. “The eventual goal
is to analyze the entire vocal production
mechanism; once you have a parametric
description for this (how the air columns
vibrate in trombones and how the vocal
cords vibrate in humans), you can invert
it and synthesize speech sounds.” Using
clear plastic mouthpieces on wind in-
struments, and looking inside the vocal
tract, researchers can get a glimpse of
what’s happening on the inside. “While
we can model and accurately replicate
simple vowel sounds with existing techniques, things like shh, fff, kkk, and all the
other sounds we make are a bit harder.”
Mahadevan, however, might have to
wait for a solo performance, even for
the good of research. “I am ashamed to
say that I’ve been so busy getting things
up and running, I have not unpacked
my horn since I’ve arrived,” says Wolfe.
“It’s like any other physical activity. You
have to get into the regimen of playing
thirty to forty-ﬁve minutes a day.” As for
the eternal question, “Why the trombone?” he admits that he cannot think
of any professional trombonist who
chose the instrument on purpose. In
his case, his school marching band had
to ﬁll a slot (in the front row, naturally).
The trombone, however, is a mainstay
in classical orchestras and is frequently
employed in jazz and pop.
While at Cambridge, where Wolfe held
a fellowship and college lectureship
jointly in engineering and computer
science at New Hall and eventually
served as dean, he frequently had music
gigs, played in the orchestra, led a big
band, and even directed the musical
scholarship program. Once he settles
into the Division, he will beneﬁt from
the close proximity of the Harvard Music Department, a few steps away from
Maxwell Dworkin.
In the meantime, his work and collaborations in electrical engineering, statistics, and related ﬁelds are likely to keep
him busy, as is the attitude of his fellow
faculty. “Everyone at DEAS thinks like a
scientist—engineers included. I think
that really sets us apart. People here
start at a different point, blending basic
science and technology to create something new.” J
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 15
Intersections
(Right) Rebecca Nesson is one of 10 DEAS
graduate students who worked at local
Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School
during the past year to help teachers
develop and implement educational activities that excite students about science
and engineering.
“I
knew immediately it was something I would like to do; pretty
much since I graduated from Rindge, I
have been doing tutoring,” says Rebecca
Nesson A.B. ’98, referring to her alma
mater, Cambridge Rindge and Latin High
School. The “something” she mentions
is the National Science Foundation’s
GK-12 program that puts Harvard
graduate students like Nesson to work
in the Cambridge Public School System.
Home schooling
When Nesson talks, it’s clear that she
has the air of a teacher and the patiencetempered passion necessary to compete
for the dwindling teenage attention
span. She always knew that teaching
was in her future, but her academic path
was not as clear. Nesson studied folklore
and mythology as an undergraduate at
Harvard, received a J.D. at Harvard Law
School in 2001, and then, ﬁnding inspiration in that school’s Berkman Center
for Internet and Society, took classes
in computer science part-time at DEAS
before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. in the
ﬁeld in fall 2003.
Rindge, she says, is “a tough school
system because students come in with
low skill levels when they start in ninth
grade, and teachers are not necessarily
in a position, with classes as large as
they are, to catch everyone up.”
That hard reality, which she learned
ﬁrsthand, is what inspires Nesson to
get students excited about something
potentially even more daunting: math,
science, and engineering. She appeals to
what students know and love—technology, whether in the form of their MP3
players, cell phones, Xboxes, or PS2s.
To make physics more appealing and
accessible, Nesson created a module on
sound, centered on recording technology—from how to build a speaker or microphone to what happens in a modern
music studio. “I was doing some of the
songs that they liked and tried to relate
[the songs] speciﬁcally to the stuff they
were learning about, such as amplitude,
frequency, and ﬁlters.”
Her own ﬁeld of computer science was
a tougher sell because, Nesson says
frankly, “the stuff is hard and it really
requires students to push through logical thinking, and they are going to make
mistakes. If we are working on sorting
an array of numbers, we will take num-
bers on a piece of paper and stand at the
front of the class and run the sorting
algorithm ourselves,” she says. “The
students then can get a sense that [the
information] is already there in their
heads, making it easier to put it into the
code”—in this case, Java.
Amazingly, Nesson doesn’t see herself as
a role model. For her, participating in the
GK-12 program is a privilege, a rare opportunity to pursue teaching and bring
the latest research off the bench (or the
monitor) and into a classroom—one
she herself sat in not that long ago.
She says she simply wants to provide
support, encourage teamwork, and
help students realize that “in science
and engineering, failure is likely”—but
that’s not a bad thing, since failure often
inspires creative solutions. J
To learn more, visit
www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nesson/
GK-12 takes teamwork
“Students and teachers get a lot out of
the program,” says Kathryn Hollar (left),
Director of Educational Programs at
DEAS. “But we tend to forget that the
graduate students also beneﬁt, both
by explaining the research they’re doing
to students who don’t yet have an
extensive science background and by
ﬁelding some of the unexpected
yet fundamental questions that these
students have.” For more, see
http://gk12.harvard.edu/
16 I DEAS – Spring 2005
Intersections
munity Affairs, middle-school students
have a chance to spend a day immersed
in the college experience. The project’s
goal is to inspire the students to dream
big, encouraged by meeting Harvard
students, eating lunch in a dining hall,
and touring the campus.
Robert Westervelt (above) gives a wave
to explain how the physics of motion may
get in the way of a good shot; and then
(at right) gives two students a quick spin
to demonstrate.
Early admits
E
very year a group of Cambridge
seventh graders has an opportunity
to get into Harvard early—about ﬁve
years early. Thanks to Project TEACH
(The Educational Activities of Cambridge-Harvard), a partnership with the
city’s public schools created more than
15 years ago by Harvard’s Ofﬁce of Com-
As part of the endeavor, the Division’s
Director of Educational Programs,
Dr. Kathryn Hollar, asks NSEC- and
MRSEC-afﬁliated faculty to demonstrate
their engineering know-how. Last year,
students learned about the wonders of
carbon nanotubes from Joel Rosenberg
of the Boston Museum of Science (with
which NSEC has a strong relationship).
This past March, Robert M. Westervelt,
Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics and Director of NSEC,
let the students take a spin (see photos
at right) to understand the physics of
motion (code for a short course in basic
mechanics).
By reaching out to kids well before they
begin dreaming of ivy, Project TEACH
aims to bring out the nascent scientist
or engineer in each of them. J
High-tech society
Richardson, Radcliffe Institute Executive Dean, discussed the “myth of cyberterrorism,” contending that the Internet
has become a safe haven for terrorist
groups, and that in attacking it, they
would likely undermine themselves
and their own activities. “The fear is that
terrorists will bring down the Internet.
Yet Al-Qaida could not function without
the Internet,” she says. “I’d be far more
concerned about cyberplanning than
cyberterrorism.” Butler Lampson, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, followed
up with some timely advice on why
robust computer security is so tough to
implement. “Real-world security is about
value, locks, and especially punishment
for misdeeds. When it works, you get
good enough locks (not too many breakins), good enough police (so break-ins
aren’t a paying business), and minimum
interference with daily life.”
The Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) Distinguished
Lectureship series has succeeded in
providing a dynamic forum for the high
society of high tech. In March, Louise
Check the Web site (www.crcs.deas.harvard.edu) to watch past lectures by other speakers, including Barbara Simons
of IBM, and to see a related talk by Andy
Neff, Science Ofﬁcer at VoteHere.
Radcliffe’s Louise Richardson was one
of ﬁve speakers who took part in CRCS’s
lectureship series for 2004–2005.
Events
I
n addition to almost daily seminars
and colloquia—from computer science to squishy physics—the Division
also sponsors major workshops. Visit
www.deas.harvard.edu/newsandevents/
for the latest details, dates, and times.
Graduates are welcome (and encouraged) to attend events. Here are some
highlights from the past several months.
Sit...
and spin...
and miss.
The interface beween biology and engineering is an increasingly critical area for DEAS
and Harvard.
Going with the ﬂow
The Industrial Outreach Program (IOP)
delved into the “wet” world with its
spring workshop, “Bioengineering and
Medicine: A Conﬂuence of Innovation.”
The event attracted some of the best
and brightest in the ﬁeld, including rising bioengineering star Kristi Anseth
(U. Colorado); Robert Langer (MIT),
one of the fathers of the ﬁeld; Dean of
Engineering Matt Tirrell (UCSB); and
Harvard’s George Whitesides with the
Division’s David Edwards. J
For more details, check out
www.deas.harvard.edu/industry
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 17
Alumni Notes
Q&A with Danielle Feinberg
Breathing life into light at Pixar
B
oulder, Colorado, native Danielle
Feinberg A.B. ’96 (Computer Science) has taken a plunge into a vast
animated ocean. As lead lighting artist
at Pixar Animation Studios, she led the
team that rendered the aquatic universe
in Finding Nemo, from the surge and
swell of plant life to the bounce and pop
of billions of bubbles.
Feinberg, whose exposure to computer
graphics began at age eight with designing spirographs in LOGO, already has
a list of future classics to her credit, including A Bug’s Life; Toy Story 2; Monsters,
Inc.; and most recently, The Incredibles.
Alum Danielle Feinberg ’96 (inset) is responsible for the incredible lighting effects in the ﬁlm
The Incredibles. (Image © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios. All rights reserved.)
puter animation. It was like everything
I had ever tried to do, taken 10 million
levels up.
Are things easier today or more
difﬁcult because we can (and want to)
do so much more with technology?
With a touch of physics and a lot of
ﬁnesse, she has gone a long way forward
(that’s FD in LOGO) and will no doubt
repeat (RT) her success and light the way
for others, both real and imaginary.
I don’t think technology necessarily
makes life easier, but it deﬁnitely broadens our horizons. At Pixar, it seems like
every time we get faster computers or
some new algorithm that allows us big
efﬁciency gains, we start trying to put
in something that was previously on the
computationally expensive forbidden
list—way more detail, fur, hair, cloth,
etc. Technology can inspire creativity,
just as creativity can inspire technology.
So, you make artiﬁcial light
for a living?
Is an animator’s goal to achieve a
perfect simulation of “real life”?
We create a three-dimensional world in
the computer where I move little icons
of lights and have 30 or 40 controls over
each light. Our world in the computer
mimics real life, so if I don’t put in lights,
the ﬁnal image that ends up on ﬁlm
would be black.
Pixar always strives for believability instead of realism. When you make
humans a little more stylized, like we
tried for in The Incredibles, the audience
can accept them as human being–type
creatures, stop comparing them to the
real thing, and instead just enjoy the
story. However, there are deﬁnitely
some things where we strive for more
realism, like smoke, ﬁre, explosions,
and waterfalls. All of these things tend
to look very fake if they don’t have some
of the proper physics behind them. If
one thing goes out of whack, the whole
When did you say, “Hey, I want
to work in computer animation!”?
It was fall of 1994 in my junior year; I
was sitting in Professor Joe Marks’s
computer graphics class. He showed a
couple of the Pixar short ﬁlms one day,
and I absolutely fell in love with com18 I DEAS – Spring 2005
thing can look phony and pull the audience out of the story.
Any thoughts about being a female
computer science student and now
a professional in the ﬁeld?
Being a woman concentrating in computer science was hard. There were, on
average, about 10 percent women in my
classes, sometimes less. In my ﬁrst lead
position at Pixar, I was 23 years old and
in charge of a team of nine men, eight of
whom were older than me. I think some
of the things I learned about being in
the minority in my computer classes at
Harvard helped me navigate my way.
One thing I really missed when growing
up with computers was having any role
models or mentors that were women.
Now I spend time at several different
science camps for girls, talking about
computer animation and what I do.
How did Harvard prepare you for
what you are doing now?
The most valuable thing I learned at
Harvard was how to ﬁnd information on
my own, because it was rarely handed
to you. I also found that being around so
many intelligent and motivated people
inspired me to think very big about
what I wanted to do in my own life. And
ﬁnally, I learned the rules of hockey.
Surely that will help me for the rest of
my life! J
Graphics and animation are not
simply for the movies. “Vision and
graphics are inverse problems,”
says Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Todd Zickler, who
studies computer vision.
“In graphics, you are given a
description of the geometry, the
illumination, and the surface
material. Then, by placing a virtual camera in this scene, you can
compute the corresponding image.
In vision, we address the inverse
problem. We are given the image
and [we must] ﬁgure out what’s
going on in the world. There’s a lot
of manual ﬁne-tuning that makes
things look good in the movies.
The knobs they are turning most
often do not correspond to any
physically meaningful parameters
but are heuristics that people have
developed over time.
“In academics, we can learn from
industry by looking at what knobs
have developed over time, because
those are the things that matter
perceptually,” comments Zickler.
And he believes we have some
incredible things to look forward
to on the small screen. “The distinction between real and virtual
will sort of fade away, and we will
get away from two-dimensional
displays and work in a threedimensional environment—or an
augmented reality.” J
To digitally reconstruct a threedimensional shape (such as a face)
more accurately, Todd Zickler
introduced Helmholtz stereopsis—
a method that decouples shape and
reﬂectance information in images.
Progress and promise
T
he Challenge Fund, created by an anonymous donor to establish 10 new
professorships and 10 innovation funds, will ultimately generate a total of $45
million in new support for the Division. All 10 Innovation Funds for Engineering
and Applied Sciences have now been ﬁlled. We are also pleased to announce four
newly endowed Professorships in Engineering and Applied Sciences:
Amy Smith Berylson A.B. ’75, M.B.A. ’79 has endowed a Professorship in
Engineering and Applied Sciences in honor of her 30th reunion.
An anonymous donor has endowed a Professorship in Engineering and Applied Sciences in honor of his 30th reunion.
Arthur C. Patterson A.B. ’66, M.B.A. ’68 endowed a Professorship in
Engineering and Applied Sciences, to be named, in honor of his 40th reunion.
Robert P. Pinkas A.B. ’75, A.M. ’76 has endowed a Professorship in
Engineering and Applied Sciences in honor of his 30th reunion.
In addition, Maxwell Dworkin 323, a third-ﬂoor seminar room, has recently
been named in honor of Thomas H. Mahoney, IV A.B. ’73 in recognition of his
generous contribution.
Ingenious gifts
Giving back
Harvard graduate Fred Weber ’85, Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Ofﬁcer of Advanced Micro Devices,
Inc. (AMD), was
named an Innovator of the Year by
EDN as part of their
annual Innovation
Awards. The award
cited Weber’s role
in leading the
AMD design team
Fred Weber, ’85
responsible for developing a next-generation 64-bit processor. Weber studied physics and systems
engineering at Harvard and received a
bachelor’s degree in physics. He designated Harvard’s Division of Engineering
and Applied Sciences as the recipient of
the $10,000 award scholarship that EDN
provides as part of the honor.
Collaborative science in action
Albert J. Weatherhead III ’50 and Celia
Weatherhead have given $30 million
to create the Weatherhead Endowment
for Collaborative Science and Technology at Harvard. The endowment will
function like a venture capital fund,
enabling the University to seed promising interdisciplinary science and technology projects as they emerge. Among
the innovative areas that may be sup-
ported is nanoscience, a ﬁeld in which
researchers can now use powerful tools
to examine, manipulate, and fabricate
materials at a microscopic scale; design
molecules and drugs with speciﬁc functionality; and simulate the behavior of
complex materials. Harvard’s Center
for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) serves as
the home for much of the University’s
advanced work in nanotechnology.
In a similar way, in the early 1900s
Gordon McKay, U.S. inventor, engineer,
and entrepreneur best known for the
development of machinery that revolutionized the manufacture of footwear,
gave a then-unprecedented sum of
money to support applied science at the
Lawrence Scientiﬁc School—what we
now call DEAS. Today, McKay’s legacy
has grown to support 42 professorships
and even inspired a novel, McKay’s Bees,
by the late Thomas McMahon. J
Find out more
For more information about the
Challenge Fund or other gift
opportunities, see
www.deas.harvard.edu/alumni/
or contact:
Alexis Bloomﬁeld,
Assistant Director of Development
(617) 495-4044
alexis_bloomﬁ[email protected]
DEAS – Spring 2005 I 19
Alumni Notes
The inverse view
Connections
Two cultures
come together
I
n 1956, pundit C. P. Snow famously quipped that
scientists and nonscientists (whom he called
“literary thinkers”) lived in two separate cultures.
At the Division, we use the term “renaissance
engineer” to celebrate the way our students and
faculty are not bound to a particular culture of
thought but possess broad expertise and diverse
interests. As the pictures at left demonstrate, some
of our community members take the renaissance
metaphor more literally—pun intended, Mr. Snow. J
2
1.
A tiny raindrop captures the impressive façade
of the particle accelerator located at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Courtesy of
Research Assistant Jeffrey B. Miller.
2.
A computer simulation of a proposed triple
quantum dot circuit. Courtesy of DEAS
Research Assistant Andy Vidan.
3.
An anonymous valentine, perhaps an homage
to engineering and applied science, appeared
on a snow-covered Pierce Hall lawn in February.
Artist unknown.
4.
A detail of the gearing of a 6.5 inch visual refracting telescope (known as the Roe Telescope)
installed at Agassiz Station in 1897 by the famous
Cambridge, Mass. telescope builders Alvan Clark
& Sons. Although an antique, the device is still
used by star seekers today. Courtesy of Research
Assistant in Physics Andrew Howard.
5.
Detail of coaxial jets of immiscible ﬂuids
breaking into drops-in-drops. Courtesy of
Andrew Utada in the Weitz lab.
6.
A capillary endothelial cell, comprising an
actin ﬁlament network (in green) with its DNA
(in blue), struggles to hold onto two square
adhesive islands (in red). Courtesy of graduate
student Cliff Brangwynne of the Weitz lab.
7.
An energetic rendition of the Raman effect—the
change in the frequency of monochromatic light
when it passes through a substance. Federico
Capasso and colleagues developed a new type of
Raman laser (see page 10) that is more efﬁcient
than standard devices. Courtesy of Peter Allen,
Publications and Media Relations Director, UCSB
College of Engineering.
8.
Outcoupled Bose-Einstein condensates at
different times along their trajectories after
they are generated by stopped light pulses.
Courtesy of Professor Lene Hau.
9.
An artistic rendering, entitled “Rainy Day,” that
shows a drop on the end of a cone in a particle
ﬂow. Courtesy of Andrew Utada in the Weitz lab.
1
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Feedback loop
We welcome and appreciate your
comments, suggestions, and
corrections. Please send feedback to
[email protected]
or call us at 617-496-3815. This
newsletter is published biannually by:
The Division of Engineering and Applied
Sciences Communications Ofﬁce
Harvard University
Pierce Hall
29 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Managing Editor/Writer:
Michael Patrick Rutter
8
Designer, Producer, Photographer:
Eliza Grinnell
This publication, including past issues,
is available on the Web at
www.deas.harvard.edu
Copyright © 2005 by the President
and Fellows of Harvard College
20 I DEAS – Spring 2005
9
0
10. Particle-covered droplets (the smaller black
spheres) arrayed on a larger surfactant bubble
make for an ominous doorway. The surfactant
strips the ﬂuorescent armor off the droplets and
the particles trace the Marangoni ﬂows on the
surfactant bubble, producing the vortex-like
effect seen here. False-color ﬂuorescent micrograph, courtesy of Anand Bala Subramaniam,
Manouk Abkarian, and Howard A. Stone.