1. Congratulations
Congratulations to Seongwon Kim (Ph.D candidate studying with Professor Mani Soma's). He won two awards
at the annual conference held by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, Techcon 2000, which was held
in Phoenix, Arizona from September 21-23. Seongwon Kim was one of five graduate students who had invited
abstracts accepted from the EE Dept. at the UW. Seongwon Kim won the Intel's Top-16 Student Award (Intel
awarded a laptop computer to each of the best presentations in each session. Mr. Kim's session was
"Analog and Mixed Signal"). He also won a 'Best-in-Session' Award. Other students who attended Techcon
2000 include Douglas Beck, (advisor D. Allstot); Su Kio, Gregg Hoyer, & Miodrag Vujkovic (advisor C.
Sechen).
Congratulations to Professors David Allstot, Scott Hauck and 6 other EE and two CSE professors for winning
a $4 million NSF ITR grant.
For details, please see
http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/2000archive/09-00archive/k091300.html.
This is one of the largest grants in this very competitive national program.
Congratulations also to Associate Professor Deirdre Meldrum and her team of research profs, engineers and
students. They have recently received two new multi-million dollar grants from NIH for work in genomics and
genomic automation.
Please welcome our new assistant professor, Radha Poovendran. Radha is an expert in wireless network
security. He is joining us from the University of Maryland. Also please welcome Linda Bushnell. Dr. Bushnell is
an expert in network applications to control systems. She has joined us as an affiliate professor, and is
teaching the mobile robotics course this quarter.
A belated congratulations to Professor Alex Mamishev and the entire 'Rainmaker One' robotics competition
team. As described in http://www.ee.washington.edu/events/2000/robots_shine.html,
this team of UW undergraduates and local high school students did very well in both the Pacific Coast and National
competitions.
A bit of bragging: the faculty, staff and research students in the department have done an outstanding job in
winning new research grants over the past 15 months. During the last budget biennium (July 1997 - June
1999) the EE department received about $13.7 million in external research support. For the current biennium
(July 1999 - June 2001) we are estimate achieving at least $21 million. Already, we have booked over $15
million, know of several million more that is coming--and we have pending proposals of around $50 million. This
will support a lot of graduate research assistants! The department has also scored a large increase in
equipment, software and cash gifts from our corporate friends. Congratulations to everyone who has
participated in this success.
2. New and Old Building Update
The end is near for EEB. Our latest information is that the old EE building will be emptied out after this
quarter. Then in January or February there will be hazardous material removal, followed by demolition. Then
two or so years of mud, noise and other construction chaos. Hopefully by 2003 there will be a large new
addition added to EE1--this new building will house much of the CSE department, and have some more
space for EE. Like all construction projects, schedules keep changing--but I will try to keep you informed of
the latest information.
We have already moved most of our activities out of EEB, and will continue to do so for the next two months.
The tutorial center and TA offices have already been partially moved (to the second floor area of EE1). We
are working with the college and UW administration to find or construct space for the computing labs that
must move from EEB into the new building (including the new HP lab). Also, through compression of space
use in EE1 we will find a new location for the student lounge--and we are working with the college to find
locations for the mobile robotics and photonics teaching labs and other activities that are still in EEB.