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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Penn Engineering
CONTENT
From the Dean 1
Professor Researches Neck Pain 2
Whitaker Transforms Penn Bioengineering 5
Artisanal Architecture: Skirkanich Crafts 9
A New Gateway to Penn Engineering
SEAS Overseer 12
Turning Possibility into Reality
Biomedical Service Learning 14
Goes Global
Inspired Design 16
School News 21
In Memoriam 23
Pop Quiz with Sid Deliwala 24
PENN ENGINEERING NEWS
FALL 2006
THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
AND APPLIED SCIENCE
123 TOWNE BUILDING
220 SOUTH 33RD STREET
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19104-6391
EMAIL alumni@seas.upenn.edu
PHONE 215-898-6564
FAX 215-573-2131
www.seas.upenn.edu
EDUARDO D. GLANDT
Dean
GEORGE W. HAIN III
Executive Director
Development and Alumni Relations
JOAN S. GOCKE
Director, Special Projects
and Communications, Editor
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Jane Brooks
Derek Davis
Jessica Stein Diamond
Michael J. Schwager
DESIGN
Kelsh Wilson Design
Cover Photo: Michael Moran
PHOTOGRAPHY
Kelsh Wilson Design
Felice Macera
Michael Moran
Alison Agres

FROM THE DEAN
Eduardo D. Glandt / Dean
Going East with Gusto
In this issue we report on a transformational event, the dedication
of Skirkanich Hall, the new home for Bioengineering.
Look at the cover of this issue, read the articles inside, and you
will understand why our excitement is running extremely high.
So are our ambitions.
Skirkanich Hall is a milestone in the 30-year history of Penn
Bioengineering, already one of the country’s top programs.
Bioengineering takes full advantage of the campus geography,
of the fortunate proximity of Engineering and Medicine at
Penn. Bioengineering enrolls the largest fraction of students in
our School, who are motivated in their studies by the palpable
role of technology in contemporary biomedicine.
Skirkanich Hall accomplishes several things for Bioengineering
and for the entire School. First and foremost, it provides us with
much needed “wet” lab space for teaching and for advanced
research at the molecular level. A total of 15 state-of-the-art
laboratories delight its occupants and dazzle its many visitors.
Skirkanich also unifies the Engineering complex, which can
now boast of extraordinary circulation: bumping into colleagues
is unavoidable. Such accidents are actually a great
asset to modern technology, so intrinsically interdisciplinary.
Skirkanich is a spectacular facility, hailed as the best building
in Philadelphia—and thus on campus—in many years. The
beautiful Quain Courtyard at the center of our complex
boasts of an infinity fountain, a waterfall and a secret garden
planted with river birches. Yes, it is a different Engineering
School. For the first time the School has a main door, a grand
entrance on a Philadelphia street. With Penn ready to acquire
24 acres of land from the U.S. Postal Service, the whole campus
is poised to expand eastward towards Center City.
There is no rest for the weary. The completion of Skirkanich
Hall launches the next phase of the strategic plan of our School.
It is no secret that nanoscience, all that happens at the submicron
level, is at the core of many of the technologies of the
future. We take pride that this year the magazine Small Times
has ranked us as No. 1 in the country in nanotechnology
research. Professors and students from all departments are
busily working in this exciting area. Predictably, they too have
run into a limitation, the lack of sufficient “clean laboratory”
space, an indispensable resource for such delicate systems. Given
the minuscule size of the objects being handled, “clean labs”
must be free of dust, of vibrations and of any electromagnetic
fields, and are as important for teaching as for research. We
often refer to them as “the machine shops of the 21st century,”
places for not just the fabrication but the micro- and nanofabrication
of devices.
Our ambitious goals now call for a nanoscale research facility
on the 3200 block of Walnut, at the site of a parking lot
adjacent to the LRSM building and across the street from
the David Rittenhouse Laboratory. This new lab will be a joint
undertaking with the School of Arts and Sciences and will
serve not only Engineering but also the Departments of
A total of 15 state-of-the-art laboratories delight
its occupants and dazzle its many visitors.
Skirkanich also unifies the Engineering complex,
which can now boast of extraordinary circulation:
bumping into colleagues is unavoidable. Such
accidents are actually a great asset to modern
technology, so intrinsically interdisciplinary.
Chemistry and Physics, the Health Schools and the Philadelphia
community. The promise of this high-tech gateway to the
campus is already allowing us to recruit brilliant and charismatic
new faculty. I hope you’ll read about some of our
new arrivals, including Dr. Christopher Murray, another
transformational event.
Plan to visit the Penn campus, tour exquisite Skirkanich Hall
and witness all that’s happening. We warn you, however: our
enthusiasm can be infectious!
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 1

The adult human spine consists of 23 vertebrae: 7 in the neck area, called
cervical vertebrae; 11 in the chest area, thoracic; and 5 in the lower back,
lumbar. Winkelstein’s work focuses on compression injury to the cervical
nerve root and tensile injury to the facet capsule ligament. Both structures
are located at each cervical spinal joint. Mechanical injury to either
structure may cause neck pain.

Professor Researches
Dr. Beth Winkelstein’s research is a pain in the neck. Really.
Winkelstein—reflective, enthusiastic, and an award-winning assistant
professor of bioengineering—scrutinizes the causes, prevention, and
treatment of chronic neck pain.
Neck Pain
BY MICHAEL J. SCHWAGER
Using a combination of biomechanical and immunologic techniques,
Winkelstein and her team of researchers investigate the two common
types of injuries to the cervical spine to determine how those
injuries produce pain. Among the questions they’re striving to
answer: What mechanisms are involved in whiplash and other
painful injuries? Why do people with the same injury experience
pain differently?
The adult human spine consists of 23 vertebrae: 7 in the neck area,
called cervical vertebrae; 11 in the chest area, thoracic; and 5 in the
lower back, lumbar. Winkelstein’s work focuses on compression
injury to the cervical nerve root and tensile injury to the facet
capsule ligament. Both structures are located at each cervical spinal
joint. Mechanical injury to either structure may cause neck pain.
Her research aims to understand how mechanical loading translates
into the physiological processes involved in neck pain. The mechanical
loading mimics the clinically relevant conditions of pain in the
spine and its tissues: ligaments and neural elements. The loading
includes vertebral motions that can (1) compress the nerve roots
that exit the spinal canal and (2) stretch the facet capsule ligament,
which encloses the joints in the posterior part of the spinal column.
In addition, Winkelstein says, she has models that mimic a disc
herniation, which load the nerve root.
It’s known, she says, that the compression of the cervical nerve root
causes a cascade of pain events. But among the many aspects of
persistent neck pain that are not known is why some people who
experience whiplash have pain for 10 years and some have pain for
only days or weeks. It’s also unclear why women have a higher
incidence of whiplash than men.
Further, Winkelstein says, some patients walk into a doctor’s office
suffering excruciating pain, yet no signs of injury appear on their
imaging studies, such as MRI. Often in those cases, she says, “we still
don’t know the fundamental problem of what’s going on.”
The work now taking place at Winkelstein’s Spine Pain Research
Laboratory, however, is expanding what had been a relatively limited
knowledge of those crucial areas. “Many people are looking at pain
from a clinical standpoint,” Winkelstein says. “What makes us
unique is the different inputs that we apply.”
Thus, for example, what happens in the laboratory when researchers
alter the magnitude of the tissue compression? As compression
increases, tissue displacement increases as well. Eventually the tissue
fails completely—it breaks. “You have pain as the tissue is compressed,”
Winkelstein says. “Our data show that pain occurs not only
when the tissue fails; subfailure tissue injuries also produce pain.”
In vivo models form the core of Winkelstein’s research because
computer modeling and research on cadavers have limitations.
“Computer and cadaver modeling,” she says, “can only suggest and
conjecture. Until we translate the research into physical and chemical
responses, we won’t know exactly what’s going on. You can’t treat
a cadaver.”
Two likely factors in neck pain, Winkelstein says, are plasticity in the
central nervous system and the production of an immune response
in the cervical spinal cord. Painful injury activates spinal glial cells,
which transmit signals in the spinal cord. The production of a variety
of cytokines—proteins that are part of the immune response—
can be initiated by spinal neurons and is increased. Along with
neuronal sensitization, immune cells become activated. Together with
those cellular responses, pain mediators, such as substance P, are
directly or indirectly released.
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 3

“Recent findings,” she says, “point to a potent immune response
in the central nervous system, together with neuronal activity.
This chain of neuroimmune events can produce changes—often
permanent changes—in spinal plasticity, which in turn can
cause chronic pain.”
Winkelstein earned a bachelor of science in engineering from
Penn in 1993 and a PhD from Duke in 1999. She embarked on
her injury biomechanics studies as an undergraduate. “I was
working with the brain injury group,” she says. “I wanted to
pursue biomechanics that would help people. I asked David
Meaney, Professor of Bioengineering for a suggestion, and he
recommended the area of neck injury biomechanics. It was a
research area starting to take off.”
Taking off at the same time was significant progress in car safety.
“The automobile industry had done so much to save lives,”
Winkelstein says. “They had developed air bags. Two remaining
areas of concern were pediatric injury and a group of injuries
that no one could solve—whiplash.”
Now the territory is more charted, thanks to extensive research
over the past 15 years. Traditionally, Winkelstein says, “the pain
field concentrated on how neurons responded. Today we know
that glial cells, which support and protect neurons, play a role as
well. Fifteen years ago, we did not know glial cells were important
in pain. In recent years, we’ve begun to understand that
they are, and we understand much more about these injuries.”
More than a decade after receiving her Penn diploma,
Winkelstein is back on the campus. Her thoughts about teaching
at her alma mater? “I’m sentimental about it. Many of my
professors have retired, but others are still here. It is great working
with them. I have fond memories of my student days, and
it’s an honor to be back here teaching.”
Both undergraduate and graduate courses occupy Winkelstein’s
schedule. “Teaching and interacting with an undergraduate
population in engineering was very important to me in
coming back to Penn.”
Her undergraduate class is a required lab course for sophomores
and the only bioengineering course that students take in the
spring. This fall, Winkelstein is teaching Technology and
Engineering in Medicine, a Ben Franklin Scholars course in bioengineering
that she developed. “There was much interest in it,”
she says, “which reflects the caliber of our students.”
Winkelstein’s own caliber has been acknowledged in recent
years. In 2006 alone, Winkelstein shared the Ford Motor
Company Award for Outstanding Faculty Advising with Dr.
Steven Nicoll, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. Winkelstein
was also awarded the Y. C. Fung Young Investigator Award from
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a
Career Award from the National Science Foundation.
The Fung award, established in 1985, honors a young investigator
under age 36 who, as the organization states, “is committed to
In vivo models form the core of Winkelstein’s research, because computer
modeling and research on cadavers have limitations. “Computer and cadaver
modeling,” she says, “can only suggest and conjecture. Until we translate the
research into physical and chemical responses, we won’t know exactly what’s
going on. You can’t treat a cadaver.”
“When I started in 1993, we didn’t know whether neck pain was
a true pathology. Now we know it is. For most people, the longterm
problem is pain and disability.”
Winkelstein’s research will have impact on two broad aspects
of neck pain: prevention and treatment. In the next five years,
she says, her work can affect treatment more. “Once we
understand the many factors involved, we can tailor-make
treatments—surgical and pharmacologic—to an individual’s
presentation of pain.”
pursuing research in bioengineering and has demonstrated significant
potential to make substantial contributions to the field
of bioengineering.” Winkelstein was recognized “for outstanding
bioengineering research, particularly current efforts to identify
biomechanical determinants for prolonged painful responses.”
The Career Award is a $400,000, five-year grant to study the
biomechanics of neck pain. “It means they believe in my work,”
she says. “The ASME award indicates that the advances we are
making—from engineering to interdisciplinary study—are
recognized as the right next steps.”
FALL 2006 ■ 4

EMPOWER
BY JESSICA STEIN DIAMOND
or that the primary responsibility for obtaining the $14 million
grant that would set this all in motion would fall on his
shoulders at age 39, in a race-the-clock scenario with a foundation
that was on the brink of spending itself out of existence.
One remarkable aspect of academia is how a professor’s impact
can reverberate—influencing generations of scientific researchers,
even altering a university’s physical footprint. Hammer never
intended to join the Penn faculty after obtaining his PhD here in
Chemical Engineering. But his research gravitated inexorably
toward biomedical topics during his next eight years on Cornell
University’s engineering school faculty. That’s when Penn
Engineering’s unique proximity to a world-class medical school
just a few minute’s walk down 34th Street, became irresistible.
Hammer joined the Penn Engineering faculty in 1996 and was
appointed full professor in 1998.
Writing a Whitaker Foundation Leadership Development Award
grant became Hammer’s top priority the day he joined the
Bioengineering department as chair in early 2000. He had just
three months to submit the proposal that would ultimately
reshape Bioengineering’s infrastructure, faculty and curriculum—
competing against universities nationwide for Whitaker dollars.
Whitaker
Transforms
Penn
Bioengineering
As a graduate student at Penn in the early
1980s, Daniel A. Hammer never imagined he
would become the driving force behind not
just a major transformation of Penn’s
Bioengineering Department but also its
architecturally stunning new home.
What ultimately prompted Whitaker to fund that grant, says Peter
Katona, then the President and CEO of Whitaker and now a
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George
Mason University, was that “We liked that the university has had
a long history of education in biomedical engineering. The university
wanted to revitalize their department. We thought the way it
was going to be done was really excellent for Penn. It was very
interesting that the department was going to offer laboratory experience
at all levels of undergraduate education. That a researchoriented
faculty was willing to commit to a model of education
that takes up a lot of faculty time is very commendable.”
That $14 million Whitaker Leadership Development Award was
one of the six largest grants made by Whitaker during the 30
years the foundation cumulatively gave away $700 million. While
this funding was the impetus for building Skirkanich Hall, its
true purpose was to revitalize Bioengineering education at Penn.
Ultimately, Whitaker’s legacy at Penn will be revealed in the
collective future scientific impact of the eight new faculty
members recruited into Bioengineering for this undertaking:
Christopher Chen, Jason Burdick, Steven Nicoll, Ravi
Radhakrishnan, Casim Sarkar, John Schotland, Andrew Tsourkas
and Beth Winkelstein. Their research programs have already
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 5

widened Bioengineering’s scientific scope to include molecular,
cellular and tissue engineering, and have bolstered the department’s
areas of established clinical strength in neuroengineering
as well as injury, cardiovascular and orthopedic bioengineering.
“This takes us from an old style Bioengineering department with
great strengths in dry bioengineering—people doing computational
neuroscience and making silicon chips to mimic vision—
to a department with great strengths in molecular and cellular
engineering,” says Hammer.
This paradigm shift can even be seen in the department’s evolving
approach to injury mechanics. “Fifteen years ago, researchers
would worry about how force puts stress on a spinal column and
brain tissue during an impact,” says Hammer. “Now our department
thinks about how to regenerate tissue across neural injuries
in the spinal cord. We’ve gone from how do you prevent and
monitor macroscopic injury to how do you engineer repair at the
level of the cell.”
Since 2000, Bioengineering’s mean faculty age has shifted down
20 years (with an even distribution of assistant, associate and full
professors). “The pace of discovery in Bioengineering is so fast
you need young faculty to bring new technologies into the
department and to teach state-of-the-art techniques,” says
Hammer. And Bioengineering’s curriculum has swelled with new
“The pace of discovery in Bioengineering is
so fast you need young faculty to bring new
technologies into the department and to
teach state-of-the-art techniques,” says
Hammer. And Bioengineering’s curriculum
has swelled with new courses taught by
young faculty in topics such as molecular
imaging, biomaterials, optical imaging,
biomedical imaging, and molecular and
cellular engineering.
courses taught by young faculty in topics such as molecular
imaging, biomaterials, optical imaging, biomedical imaging, and
molecular and cellular engineering.
Tsourkas, an assistant professor, says: “Each of the new faculty
members are working in these new, exciting areas in close proximity
to each other. We’re using the best tools of the discipline
and working collaboratively to push the boundaries of bioengineering
discovery even further.”
A simultaneous cultural shift occurred in Bioengineering’s
approach to undergraduate education. The Bioengineering
Department pioneered discovery-based learning in 1990. A
decade later, it was time for an update: Whitaker funding was
used to transform lab modules with scientific ‘to do’ lists into a
more experimental approach. Using the specially designed teaching
laboratories in Skirkanich, students learn by collaboratively
testing hypotheses, analyzing and debugging data, and reshaping
experiments to generate meaningful data.
“From the time an undergraduate arrives at Penn to the time they
graduate, they’ll spend every semester in the laboratory or in a
team project solving some complex problem in Bioengineering,”
says Hammer.
“Penn was way ahead of the curve on discovery-based learning,”
says Winkelstein, Bioengineering assistant professor. “We did it
before it was fashionable. But in the new model we’ve taken it to
another level. With Whitaker funding we’ve really coordinated
FALL 2006 ■ 6

the lab experience to complement and reinforce the didactics
from the lecture courses. The lab experience puts a real-world
spin on what the students are learning. We don’t do experiments
for them. Our approach forces students to work independently
with support if they need it.”
According to Hammer, “Traditional classroom teaching tends to
presents problems and solutions. There’s no understanding of all
the failures that went into that process of discovering that answer
which implies that answers are easy to obtain. Experiments teach
students how to deal with failure, reevaluate techniques and
goals, and reformulate new experiments to answer the questions
you’re trying to ask.”
That laboratory experience “empowers our students,” says Glandt.
“When they walk into the next step of their lives—be that a job,
graduate school or medical school—they will be shining that
very first day. They will know their way around a lab and their
way around data and measurements. They’ll know how to criticize
their own work, how to judge the results of experimentation,
and how seriously to take their work and the work of others. We
can no longer treat undergraduates like children, especially when
they are this bright, and tell them ‘study science in the classroom
for two years, trust us this is good for you.’ Bioengineering’s
experience with discovery-based learning has led the whole
engineering profession to rethink the importance of handson
experience.”
Another Whitaker-funded addition to the Bioengineering
curriculum is the clinical preceptorship that is required for all
Bioengineering juniors. This programmatic initiative allows
students to participate in clinical research with faculty at Penn’s
medical school. “This course was an important impetus for
Whitaker funding,” says Katona. “Undergraduates were able
to gain first-hand knowledge of what goes on in the clinical
environment, which again shows that education is an important
mission for Bioengineering.”
Cumulatively, Bioengineering’s expanded faculty, revamped
approach to undergraduate education, and new facilities appear
to be paying off. The department’s national ranking according to
US News & World Report jumped up from 9th in the nation in
2001 to 5th in 2006. Undergraduate Bioengineering enrollment
climbed from 45 students in the class of 2003 to 108 students in
the class of 2009. And graduate applications leaped from 188 in
2001 to 236 in 2005 (with a parallel increase in GRE scores from
1312 to 1416).
Though in retrospect, the path might seem smooth to building
Skirkanich and transforming Bioengineering, at the time it was a
nail-biter. The department needed a lead donor for the building
because the first Whitaker payment was contingent on getting a
building out of the ground.
TRANSFORM
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 7

A $10 million gift from Penn Overseer Peter Skirkanich (W’65)
and his wife Geri had the catalytic effect of inspiring other major
donors to contribute to the new building so that construction
could begin in 2003 and major construction milestone payments
would be complete before Whitaker vanished in 2006. [Editor’s
note: Actually, the cumulative support from the Skirkanich family
may have just as lasting an impact as Whitaker on future generations
of scientists at SEAS. They had previously funded the Skirkanich
Professorships of Innovation to hire young faculty and created
Skirkanich Endowed Scholarships for engineering undergraduates.]
Whitaker-related suspense continued through mid-2006.
Continuing stewardship of Bioengineering’s parallel academic
and physical transformation was critical through the day the
foundation closed. “There was a lot of pressure to keep the ball
rolling,” recalls Hammer. “The Whitaker Foundation was known
for suspending payments if progress was unsatisfactory. I’m
pleased to report that we did receive every last dime of the grant.
We delivered on all of our objectives and goals, and the full $14
million was paid.”
That laboratory experience “empowers our students,” says
Glandt. “When they walk into the next step of their lives—
be that a job, graduate school or medical school—they will
be shining that very first day. They will know their way
around a lab and their way around data and measurements.
They’ll know how to criticize their own work, how
to judge the results of experimentation, and how seriously
to take their work and the work of others.”
FALL 2006 ■ 8

INSPIRE
BY JESSICA STEIN DIAMOND
ask Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron
what she thinks of Skirkanich Hall, Penn’s new 58,400 square
foot home for Bioengineering research and education, and
you’ll hear superlatives that are completely out of character.
“Skirkanich is the best building and the best-made building
in Philadelphia in at least a decade,” says Saffron, who more
typically offers trenchant analyses of Philadelphia’s newest buildings’
flaws in design, workmanship and urban planning. In an
interview with Penn Engineering, Saffron describes Skirkanich
as a “beautiful, ambitious, contemporary design that’s exquisitely
crafted, and that’s respectful of Philadelphia and of the
University of Pennsylvania. It feels like something handmade,
something artisanal and textured, like a hand-knit sweater.
You feel the hand of the architects on this building and the
hand of the construction workers which makes it very human
and warm.”
The colors and composition of Skirkanich are a bold departure
from standard Penn red brick construction. Its 33rd Street façade
Artisanal Architecture:
Skirkanich Crafts
A New Gateway to
Penn Engineering
is composed of a vertical wall of glass rectangles and steel
squares adjacent to a broad vertical rectangle of green-glazed
brick with subtle color shifts evocative of the natural serpentine
stone of College Hall. Hovering over the streetscape, Skirkanich
creates a subliminal front porch for Penn Engineering and a natural
entranceway to the closed Quain Courtyard formed by the
Moore School and Towne Buildings on either side and Levine
Hall, opposite.
“Most architects would have imitated what’s next door, but they
didn’t fall for that,” says Saffron. “The magic and brilliance of the
design is that it unifies two completely different buildings and
provides them with a clearly demarcated entry point.”
Pedestrians walking west toward Penn’s campus center enter the
engineering complex at Skirkanich’s 210 South 33rd Street

“Skirkanich is the best building and the best-made
building in Philadelphia in at least a decade,”
says Saffron, who more typically offers trenchant
analysis of Philadelphia’s newest buildings’ flaws
in design, workmanship and urban planning.
MOTIVATE
address, pass through an outdoor street-level castle gate-like tunnel,
walk through a birch-lined passageway, beyond a bamboo
grove, across an outdoor patio where a Zen-like waterfall slips
into a secluded fern and birch garden, and cross through the
ground floor doors of Levine Hall directly out to Chancellor
Walk toward 34th Street.
“Visually, Skirkanich communicates the aesthetics of the applied
sciences to the university and the community at large, and
expresses the highly focused creative energy of our engineering
school’s faculty and students,” says Dean Eduardo Glandt.
Walk inside Skirkanich and you’ll find core functions of graduate
research and laboratory-based undergraduate education in a
memorable milieu: an acoustically ideal auditorium on the lower
level; undergraduate teaching labs and Bioengineering
Department offices on the second and third floors; graduate and
faculty research in cutting-edge laboratory facilities on floors four
and five. Faculty laboratories in Skirkanich feature open alcoves
for chemistry, cell biology, wet lab benches, and shared cold
rooms, and autoclave and microscope rooms.
DESIGN FEATURES INCLUDE:
• Interior Escher-like compositions of staircases aesthetically
solve a Rubik’s cube of connection points
between adjacent buildings—creating elegant, handicap-accessible
links between the adjacent Towne and
Moore buildings.
• Interior wall murals of hand-crafted apple yellow
tiles feature different composition of horizontal and
vertical bands on each floor that combined with a
gradually sloping vertical interior atrium wall provide
visual subliminal clues to what floor you’re on.
• A striking top floor conference room appears to float
in mid-air with spectacular views of the Penn campus
and downtown Philadelphia.
FALL 2006 ■ 10

Forty-five percent of the building’s $42 million construction cost
is for HVAC and mechanicals for sterile hoods, gas and compressed
air. “The fact that they can get in these beautiful social
spaces and gorgeous light plus the refuge of a garden and still
have efficient HVAC is an amazing combination,” says Saffron.
Financial momentum for Skirkanich came from a generous $10
million gift from Penn Overseer and Trustee Peter Skirkanich,
W’65, and his wife Geri. Their donation was part of the financial
match required for a $14 million Leadership Development Award
from the now defunct Whitaker Foundation. The remainder
came from individual donors.
“Once a building is so right programmatically, people want to
be a part of that project,” says Dean Glandt. “We were surprised
at how generous alumni were in making this possible. The fact
that we succeeded in raising the money and built something so
beautiful gives us credibility and traction for the nanotechnology
building planned for Penn Engineering.”
Designed by the husband and wife team of Tod Williams/Billie
Tsien of New York, award-winning designers of the
Neurosciences Institute at La Jolla, California, and New York’s
American Folk Art Museum, Skirkanich opened to the public in
October. The architects were selected by the Penn Engineering
Dean in consultation with the University President, the Dean of
the School of Design, the Vice President for Facilities and Real
Estate, and the University Architect.
Skirkanich is located on the Southwest quadrant of
Walnut and 33rd Streets.

BY JANE BROOKS
Dr. John Davis
Turning
Possibility
into Reality
A news release once referred to him as “one of the
visionary technologists of the telecommunications revolution.”
John H. Davis, GrE ‘70, Co-founder and Principal,
Technology Advisors Group, says “it was one of the
greatest things anyone could say about me.” Then, with
the drive that marks a true visionary, he adds, “But the
ideal compliment would read, ‘He knows how to make
things happen.’”
With more than 40 years of experience in both management and
consulting for technology-related companies, ranging from earlystage
private entities to the Fortune Fifty, Davis is an invaluable
member of the Board of Overseers for the School of Engineering
and Applied Science. His unique contribution, however, may be his
talent for turning possibility into reality.
Davis began his career at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ in 1962. He
earned a doctorate in electrical engineering, commuting to Penn
with a carpool of fellow Bell Lab employees. Although Davis did
not experience much campus life, he does recall the turbulent
atmosphere of the late sixties. Despite a demanding schedule, he
played trombone (a passion briefly considered as a career) in a
company-sponsored jazz band.
Reconnection with Penn came as Davis worked his way up the
company ranks. As an AT&T Campus Executive for Penn, he coordinated
activities among the various AT&T groups who had an
interest in the University. Under his watch, the company donated
computers and financed the refurbishment of a lab to accommodate
them, thus developing one of the Engineering School’s first modern
computer labs. After several company moves in the Midwest, Davis
ultimately returned to New Jersey where he became CTO of AT&T
Communications Services. He is credited with having conceived the
architecture and managed the initial development of the No. 5
Electronic Switching System, the core of today’s public switched
telephone system.
A strong desire to give back to the University motivated Davis’s
alumni affiliation. “One factor that affected my desire to become
more active is that both my daughter and my nephew had great
experiences at Penn. My goal was to pay back, to bring some of
my experience to the challenges that Penn, like so many universities,
is facing.”
Davis is enthusiastic about membership on the Board of Overseers,
“It’s an opportunity to collaborate with a world-class group, not to
mention working with Dean Eduardo Glandt, who is so inspirational.
Everyone takes his assignment seriously and expects actions
as a result of debate. The Board has a huge diversity of viewpoint,
which is very healthy. I feel that I bring a unique experience,
having come from a house of pure science into the business
world and into the creation of technology by much smaller,
technology-driven enterprises. “
After a 35-year career, Davis took early retirement in 1997. In 2001,
he co-founded Technology Advisors Group, working with investors,
boards and management teams of high tech companies. Davis
recently made a significant financial contribution to revitalize a laboratory
in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering.
This facility has been named the John H. Davis Laboratory.
Active in his community, Davis is a member of the local firefighters
and the emergency medical service. He and wife Beverly spend
leisure time traveling and cruising on their boat, and enjoying their
grandchild, whose Dad Rob, not surprisingly, has been an executive
in some very large corporate firms—AT&T, NCR, Siebel Systems,
Oracle, etc., but has also been instrumental in the early stages of
development of very small entrepreneurial firms—Quixi, Socratek
and others. Davis proudly notes the recent publication of Forth A
Raven, a collection of poetry by daughter Christina Davis, C ‘93, G’93.
When asked if he still plays the trombone, Davis laughs, “I certainly
enjoy music but there’s only so much time. It becomes a question of
peeling away the unimportant and retaining the things that are near
and dear to me—family and seeing the world.”
Editor’s Note: As the magazine prepared to go to press, we learned
the very sad news that our good friend and colleague John H. Davis
had passed away after a brief illness. We will sorely miss his
indomitable spirit and gentle nature. Our hearts go out to his
family and many friends.
FALL 2006 ■ 12

SUMMER ACADEMY IN APPLIED
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SAAST)
for Talented High School Students
3 weeks, July 8th—27th 2007
• An exceptional opportunity for a selective group
of highly motivated and talented high school
students (rising 10th—12th graders)
• Rigorous, challenging college-level coursework in
engineering at Penn
• Sophisticated theory and hands-on practical
experiences in cutting edge technologies
• Six programs are offered: Computer Graphics,
Computer Programming, Nanotechnology,
Biotechnology, Robotics, and Technology and
Democracy
• Three weeks long, intensive, exhilarating, and lots
of fun and camaraderie!
For more information and on-line
application: www.seas.upenn.edu/saast
Summer
@Penn
SUMMER INSTITUTE IN BUSINESS
AND TECHNOLOGY (SIBT)
for Global Undergraduates
4 weeks, July—August 2007
• A unique opportunity for highly motivated and
globally-minded undergraduates
• Rigorous and collaborative coursework in engineering
entrepreneurship and business (Wharton) through two
courses for credit
• Case studies, presentations, teamwork and corporate
site visits focused on “Technopreneurship in the 21st
century”
• Coaching available for oral and written communication
and presentation skills
• Exceptional faculty, intensive and rewarding coursework,
cultural outings, the Penn campus experience,
and friends from all over the world!
For more information and on-line
application: www.seas.upenn.edu/sibt
Share Your Insights
Mentor an Engineering Student
Do you want to make a real difference in an
undergraduate’s life? The Sophomore Mentoring
Program seeks alumni who are interested in mentoring
second-year engineering students to—
• Provide them with firsthand exposure to the
engineering profession.
• Expand their knowledge of career opportunities
in engineering.
• Offer personal and career guidance.
OTHER WAYS TO GET INVOLVED
The Engineering Alumni Society offers alumni many other great
opportunities for getting involved with the School and the
University at large. For more information, visit our Web site at
www.seas.upenn.edu/alumni/alumnisociety/index.html.
The time commitment is minimal, but the rewards can be enormous.
For more information and to register, visit
www.seas.upenn.edu/alumni/events/mentoring.html
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 13

Biomedical Service
Learning
Goes Global
If learning is doing, then a diverse group of Penn
students was fortunate to have had the ultimate service-learning
experience this summer. They traveled to Hong Kong and
subsequently to Guangzhou, China to participate in a crosscultural
program, paired with students from the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University (PolyU). Together, the group spent two
weeks making prosthetic limbs for six Chinese men, all with
below-the-knee amputations.
BY JANE BROOKS
The inaugural Penn Engineering 2006 Global Biomedical
Service (GBS) Program included five weeks of class preparation
prior to the trip. The team-taught course spanned both technical
and cultural arenas. Daniel K. Bogen, Associate Professor of
Bioengineering, who accompanied the students, covered rehabilitation
engineering, rehabilitation medicine, and prosthetics.
Bogen describes the selection process for GBS participants, “We
were looking for ambassadors and good workers who really
wanted to use their knowledge and skills to make the world a
“MY PATIENT WAS FIFTY-FOUR WITH A DECREPIT PROSTHESIS HE RECEIVED YEARS AGO AFTER
LOSING HIS LEG IN A WORK ACCIDENT. THE OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE HIM WITH A NEW,
STATE-OF-THE-ART PROSTHESIS WAS WONDERFUL. THIS PROGRAM UNDERSCORES THE NEED
FOR MORE CLINICAL EXPERIENCE IN OUR BIOENGINEERING PROGRAM,” SAYS AN.
FALL 2006 ■ 14

THE INAUGURAL PENN ENGINEERING 2006 GLOBAL BIOMEDICAL SERVICE (GBS) PROGRAM INCLUDED FIVE
WEEKS OF CLASS PREPARATION PRIOR TO THE TRIP. THE TEAM-TAUGHT COURSE SPANNED BOTH TECHNICAL
AND CULTURAL ARENAS. DANIEL K. BOGEN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOENGINEERING, WHO ACCOMPANIED
THE STUDENTS, COVERED REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, REHABILITATION MEDICINE, AND PROSTHETICS.
Photos: Alison Agres
better place. Of twelve students who went on the trip, nine were
bioengineering students, one studied electrical engineering, and
two students were science majors, who were mentored by our
engineering students.”
The eighteen PolyU participants were undergraduates in the
Biomedical Engineering Program of the Department of Health
Technology and Informatics where Dr. Arthur F.T. Mak, who
formerly taught bioengineering at Penn, is the Chair Professor of
Rehabilitation Engineering & Head of Department. While the
PolyU students had some training in prosthetics and orthotics,
they had not worked with actual cases. Penn students had no
experience with rehabilitation engineering or prosthetics, but
they were stronger in biomechanics and, according to Bogen,
“were incredibly fast learners.”
Dr. Aaron Leung, Assistant Professor, Jockey Club Rehabilitation
Engineering Centre at PolyU, supervised the students. A team,
comprised of students from both participating schools, was
assigned to each patient. Two PolyU instructors helped the students
learn to fit, measure, make molds and manufacture the
limbs, which are fashioned from multiple pieces and materials.
Bogen explains, “The manufacturing process is important but
the fitting is an art. It can’t all be done by machine.”
For Osama Ahmed, BE ‘09, the sole freshman in the GBS
program, the experience was invaluable. Osama relished the
daily adventure of novelty—food, culture, and sights—and
the cross-cultural relationships that were deepened by working,
shopping, sightseeing, and playing Mah Jong together.
“The biggest challenge was that I had limited bioengineering
experience. The great part was that I was allowed to take more
time to learn different techniques,” says Osama.
For An M. Nguyen, BE ’07, WH ’07, the challenge was to work
through the language barrier with PolyU teammates that she
had known only for a few days and with her patients. An soon
discovered that thumbs-up is a universal sign—seeing her
patient use it was the highlight of her experience.
“My patient was fifty-four with a decrepit prosthesis he received
years ago after losing his leg in a work accident. The opportunity
to provide him with a new, state-of-the-art prosthesis was
wonderful. This program underscores the need for more clinical
experience in our bioengineering program,” says An.
Each student group had its share of frustrations. For example,
An’s group completed the fitting but a ripped lining forced
them to start over. A PolyU instructor, working on a new casting
technique, fabricated a prosthetic limb for each of the patients.
The patients were given a choice of prostheses, one made by the
instructor and one by the students. Five of the six patients, who
ranged from age thirty-six to seventy-one, walked out of the
hospital with a student-made prosthetic limb.
Reviewing the assigned student journals, Bogen identified a
common theme, “Wow, we worked hard but we did it. We
actually created something useful.” In any language, that
translates to success.
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 15

Inspired
esign
How
BY DEREK DAVIS
would you like to have a network
of intelligent trashcans around the house?
Or a mechanical xylophone that plays
itself? A digital sundial might look nice
out on the patio.
FALL 2006 ■ 16

Professor Daniel Lee and Christine Roche, BE ’08,
review lecture notes.
All of these exotic—if somewhat unlikely—devices
were developed by electrical and systems engineering (ESE)
students. The projects reflect the school’s emphasis on linking
rigorous academic training to “real-world” applications, combined
with a spirit of innovative fun.
The projects were developed by students in Dr. Daniel Lee’s ESE
350 class, “Embedded Systems and Microcontroller Laboratory.”
The course presents an introduction to the fundamental concepts
of embedded computing, which involves the kind of sensors and
processors that you find in a microwave or cell phone.
Professor Daniel Lee
“These devices are ubiquitous in the world, and the course
details exactly what makes them work,” says Lee. “What goes on
when you push a button on a cell phone to make a call is incredible.
You have a microphone that takes your voice and transduces
it into an electrical signal, the touchpad then takes the number
you need to dial and displays what’s happening on the LCD
screen, then transmits that call to a base station that goes to the
communications network.”
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 17

PROJECT 1
Intellitrash
Adding network functionality to trash cans, Intellitrash has “motion controlled” automatic lid openers that will
stop opening when the trash can is full.
PROJECT 2
Remote Control Sports Car
You can control acceleration, steering, headlights, flashers and even honk the horn of this remote
controlled “Nissan Sportster”.
Balancing lectures and labs
Lee’s course balances lectures against lab work, with the grade
depending on both written tests and a final, original project—a
working device. Questions on the written tests are based on a
deeper understanding of what the students learned in the lab.
The thrust of the course is to understand the kind of computation
involved, how sensors work, how to make a user display
and interface, and how to produce something small and compact.
“I try to make it as much real-world as possible, because
that’s what gets students excited,” Lee explains. “It ties the
classroom to what they’ll do when they get a job in industry
or start their own company.”
There are no stated prerequisites for the course. In theory, a
freshman could take the course, but in practice, students at least
need to be familiar with a programming language. The typical
ESE 350 student is a junior, but not necessarily an ESE student:
“The course had students from bioengineering and computer
science—actually, across the whole school,” says Lee.
The lectures cover subjects such as programming theory, interfaces,
and how circuits work. All lectures are tied closely to the
lab work. For example, as Lee describes how he covers motor
interfacing, “I’ll explain the physics of how motors work, what’s
involved in making them run, how you get them to be controlled
by a processor. It’s not just like a car motor with only an
accelerator pedal. At that point, the students go into the lab and
build. In the lab they have to make something work. That’s the
underlying idea of engineering—you have to make something
work. And that’s the rigorous part of the lab component.”
The first lab is devoted to getting a small processor to respond
to input. Later, the students move on to controlling DC motor
speed, hooking up a microphone to respond to the human
voice, and using infrared communication. Finally, they integrate
all the knowledge they have accumulated to create an original
project. “That’s the fun part,” says Lee, “they come up with their
own projects.”
FALL 2006 ■ 18

PROJECT 3
March Madness
A basketball game designed to be played at home! Unique features include a backboard that can rotate
30 degrees and a system to keep score.
To view these and other Senior Design projects, please visit
www.seas.upenn.edu/ese/rca/courses/ese350/index.htm
A CAPSTONE TO ENGINEERING
Senior Design is the “capstone” course for all students
pursuing the B.S.E. degree, the ultimate test in turning
theoretical knowledge into practical function. The first
semester focuses on feasibility, strategies, and a
detailed proposal for a project, including a budget.
During the second semester, the students implement
the proposal, make a prototype where feasible, and
give a professional, final presentation and report.
According to Sampath Kannan, associate dean of Penn
Engineering, “The students work closely with a faculty advisor in
small teams to integrate knowledge from across the curriculum
in a substantial project—often with real-world impact—and to
produce innovative solutions that build on existing solutions.
“Their design is critiqued both by themselves and their faculty
advisor. In many instances, an industry ‘client’ is involved. The
senior project also provides a forum for them to develop their
written and oral communication skills.” Intermediate and final
student reports are evaluated for content, clarity, and style. At
the end, following their demonstrations, faculty members and
industry judges evaluate the projects and award prizes.
The team of Zhan Chen, Albert Ip, and Kejia Wu took first place
in Senior Design last spring, with “IntelliCam: An Intelligent
Visual Tracking System” The IntelliCam system uses a webcam
and processors to track motion and send a command to a
microcontroller, which in turn controls the servo-motor angle. By
default, the system follows the largest moving object; fine-timing
parameters handle multiple moving objects. This way, it can
operate as a surveillance camera in a household setting or keep
tracking a teacher in a classroom—even if a student crosses the
field of vision.
The sophisticated report on the project would be impressive in
any corporate boardroom. It can be viewed at
www.seas.upenn.edu/ese/ee442/0506/delete/Group16.pdf.
In the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department, instructors
David Magerman and Philip Farnum, along with lab
manager Siddarth Deliwala, supervise Senior Design this year.
Daniel Lee advises some of the students. “Senior Design can
be anything,” notes Lee, “a large software programming
project, putting together a new robot, or a new electronic-commerce
system. My ESE 350 course helps prepare our students
for it. In a miniature way, they have already done a project and
seen how to use microcontrollers to control different things,
so they don’t see Senior Design as something huge and hard
to comprehend.”
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 19

Dan Lee and PhD student Paul Vernaza, EE ’04, enable the robotic “Little Dog” to navigate rough terrain in the GRASP
(General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception) Laboratory.
FALL 2006 ■ 20
Games, locks, and elevators
The ESE 350 projects have included hardware video games, an
interactive digital door-locking mechanism, and an erector-set
like elevator controlled by a keypad. The mechanical xylophone
was set up to read a score, and then play it by actuating motors
that move the mallets to strike the xylophone keys.
Lee particularly likes having the students take older ideas and
update them: the digital solar clock, for example, reads the
position of the sun like an old-fashioned sundial, and then uses
sensors and computer circuitry to display the time digitally.
In one of the most practical (future) applications, three women
students developed the intelligent trashcan. It opens automatically
by having the waste-hauler’s foot break an electrical eye set
at foot level—except when it’s full. Then the trashcan refuses to
open, but instead sends a signal to a human trash collector saying
that it needs to be emptied. Better yet, a network of cans
can even tell the sanitation engineer in which order the cans
should be emptied for maximum efficiency (a variant of the
well-known traveling salesman problem).
Research applications
Some of Lee’s students from ESE 350 go on to doing summer
research with him in the GRASP Laboratory, where he likes to
employ those who have both theoretical and practical knowledge.
“At Penn, we have a good mixture,” he notes.
In his research, as noted on his website, Lee also stresses realworld
applications: “Why is it that if computers have gotten so
much faster and cheaper, they have not become any better at
understanding what we want them to do? … To us, a picture
may be worth a thousand words, but to a machine both are just
seemingly random jumbles of numbers. … My research focuses
on applying knowledge about biological information processing
systems to building better artificial sensorimotor systems that
can adapt and learn from experience.”
On the fun side of things, Lee leads the Penn robot soccer
team, the UPennalizers, which includes some of his students. An
annual international Robocup competition among universities
presents a “grand challenge” problem in artificial intelligence
and robotics.
Lee’s students may be designing smarter trash cans, but they
aren’t talking trash. In courses like his, students use academic
rigor to forge a broad range of ideas and elements, both
practical and theoretical, into solid, useful realities. That, as
Lee notes, is the core of engineering.

School
NEWS
From “Excellence to Eminence” in Nanotechnology
Christopher B. Murray Appointed as University Professor
The School of Engineering and Applied Science is pleased to
announce the appointment of Dr. Christopher B. Murray as the
Richard Perry University Professor. As a “Penn Integrates Knowledge”
Professor, Dr. Murray will hold joint appointments in the Department of
Materials Science and Engineering and in the Department of Chemistry
in the School of Arts and Sciences.
“Penn Integrates Knowledge” is a University-wide initiative to recruit
exceptional faculty members to Penn whose research, teaching and
service exemplify the integration of knowledge across disciplines.
Integrating knowledge is one of the leading initiatives of the Penn
Compact, President Gutmann’s three-point plan to propel Penn from
“Excellence to Eminence” and to provide the University with the
resources to address some of the most complex and urgent questions
facing the world today.
Dr. Murray joins Penn on January 1, 2007 from IBM T. J. Watson
Research Center, a leading industrial research center, where he headed
the Nanoscale Materials and Devices Department. His research career
began at MIT where his graduate work on the synthesis and characterization
of semiconductor quantum dots led to a series of seminal publications
that rank amongst the highest cited works in nanotechnology
research. Dr. Murray is a world-leader in the emerging field of nanotechnology—the
driver of the next technological wave. As stated by
Dean Eduardo Glandt, “nanotechnology is the equivalent to the arrival
of the Information Age in the 50’s. Just as IT marked the transition
from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, nanotechnology
propels us forward to the next era of economic and scientific development.”
Both the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and
Sciences have identified nano-scale research as a high priority area.
Dr. Murray will complement existing strengths and position Penn at
the forefront of nanoscale research. It comes as no surprise that the
University has prioritized the building of a new nanotechnology facility,
“customized to support nanotech’s specific needs and worthy of our
top-ranked program,” says Dr. Gutmann. Just last year, Penn was
ranked No. 1 in the United States for nanotech research by the
industry’s Small Times magazine.
Integrating knowledge is one of the leading initiatives of the Penn Compact,
President Gutmann’s three-point plan to propel Penn from “Excellence to
Eminence” and to provide the University with the resources to address some
of the most complex and urgent questions facing the world today.
The Engineering and Arts and Sciences collaboration emphasizes
the promise of limitless connections between the Schools and
Departments, and opportunities to catapult these intellectual strengths
into major University initiatives. Praised by Department Chairs Marsha
Lester and Peter K. Davies, “Dr. Murray’s work bridges the boundaries
between our fundamental disciplines of chemistry and materials
science and will transform the visibility of Penn’s programs in
nanotechnology.”
Dean Rebecca Bushnell of the School of Arts and Sciences, enthused,
“We confidently expect that Murray will play a leadership role in the
development of a strong and growing program of research in
nanoscale science and engineering at Penn.” And Dean Glandt ebulliently
summed up their thoughts, “Chris Murray is a dream hire!”
PENN ENGINEERING ■ 21

School
NEWS
New Faculty
André DeHon, Associate Professor of Electrical and
Systems Engineering
PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science from MIT; post doc at UC Berkeley
and faculty position at CalTech
André’s research addresses how we efficiently
engineer systems which implement computations.
His recent areas of focus include reconfigurable
computer architectures, nanoscale
computation including molecular electronicsbased
programmable logic, and interconnect
design and optimization. His work in computer systems spans from
transistors to applications including computer architecture, VLSI, parallel
computation, compilation and mapping technology and operating and
run-time systems. Broadly, he works to understand and characterize
the computational requirements of tasks, the cost landscape for
physical implementations, and the design space for mapping logical
computations efficiently and robustly into physical realizations.
Robert W. Carpick, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
and Applied Mechanics
PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley
Rob will join Penn Engineering in January
2007 from a position as Associate Professor
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Rob’s research is at the intersection of
mechanics and materials. He is an expert in
experimental nanomechanics and nanotribology
(friction, adhesion, elasticity, wear). His
lab has developed novel advanced scanning
probe microscopy tools to investigate the
interactions that take place at contacting,
sliding interfaces. He has done seminal work
on nano-scale characterization of friction in many important materials
including ultra-thin organic films, solid single crystal and thin film surfaces,
biomaterial interfaces, and ultra-tough ceramic nano-composites.
Cherie R. Kagan, Associate Professor of Electrical and
Systems Engineering
PhD in Materials Science and Engineering,
and Electronic Materials from MIT
Cherie will join Penn Engineering in January
2007 from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
where she was a staff researcher and manager
of the Molecular Assemblies and Devices
Group.
Cherie’s research is in the area of molecular
electronics. Her work has demonstrated that
organic-inorganic hybrid materials can be utilized as an alternative class
of semiconducting channel materials for thin-film transistors.
Boon Thau Loo, Assistant Professor of Computer and
Information Science
PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley
Boon will join Penn Engineering in January
2007 after completing a postdoctoral
assignment at Microsoft.
Boon’s research is in the broad area of
systems, with particular emphasis in networking
and databases. He utilizes declarative
languages and optimization techniques from
the database world and applies them to the
problem of statement management in routers, allowing seamless
transitions between different routing protocols.
Ben Taskar, Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science
PhD in Computer Science from
Stanford University
Ben joins Penn Engineering in January 2007
after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Department at the University of California
at Berkeley. Ben’s research is in the area of
machine learning, artificial intelligence,
large-scale convex optimization, natural
language processing, computer vision, and
computational biology. His work in large-margin classification and
whether it can be extended to structured learning problems has
contributed significantly to advances in the machine learning field.
FALL 2006 ■ 22

Awards and Honors
The Biomedical Engineering Society has selected
Daniel A. Hammer, Ennis Professor and
Chair of Bioengineering, as the Society’s
Distinguished Lecturer of 2006 for his outstanding
achievements and leadership in the science
and practice of biomedical engineering.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
(ASME) has selected Beth Winkelstein,
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, as the
2006 winner of the prestigious Y.C. Fung
Young Investigator Award for outstanding bioengineering
research.
The journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry
Research has published a Festschrift in honor
of Dean Eduardo Glandt on the occasion of
his sixtieth birthday, citing his application of
the “rigorous methods of modern statistical
mechanics to the solution of practical chemical
engineering problems” and for his visionary
leadership of Penn Engineering.
The University of Pennsylvania was awarded
a $2.8 million grant as one of three national
centers for Systems Biology by the National
Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National
Institutes of Health. The 3-year interdisciplinary
project will focus on “Blood Systems
Biology” and is headed by Scott L. Diamond,
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular
Engineering.
Penn has also been selected to receive one
of the first awarded NIH Training Grants in
Computational Neuroscience. Leif Finkel,
Professor of Bioengineering, will lead this
interdisciplinary grant with 21 Penn faculty,
spanning the Schools of Engineering,
Medicine, and Arts & Sciences. The award will
support a dedicated undergraduate program
that combines training in neural computation
with experimental neuroscience, a PhD predoctoral
training program, and an annual
intensive 12-week summer training
program/course for undergraduates.
The National Science Foundation has awarded
a $2 million grant to a group of researchers
led by Val Tannen, Professor of Computer and
Information Science, to design a next-generation
data integration system for evolutionary
biologists working on the Assembling the Tree
of Life (AToL) initiative. The system will support
the work of biologists who need a single point
of access to control scientific experiments, utilize
large distributed collections of data, and
apply computational resources. Collaborating
in this project are researchers from Yale
University and UC Davis.
Lecture Notes
Britton Chance Distinguished Lecture in
Engineering & Medicine
Adam P. Arkin, Associate
Professor of Bioengineering,
University of California,
Berkeley, and Faculty Scientist,
Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, was the honored
speaker at the September 27,
2006 Britton Chance Distinguished Lecture,
sponsored by the Department of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering and the Institute for
Medicine and Engineering. Dr. Arkin’s talk,
“Adversity, Diversity and Design: Architectural
Principles of Cellular Networks”, explored how
these principles aid in the prediction, control
and design of cellular behaviors. The Britton
Chance Distinguished Lecture is named in
honor of Dr. Britton Chance, the Eldridge
Reeves Johnson University Professor Emeritus
of Biophysics, Physical Chemistry and
Radiologic Physics.
The Technology, Business and Government
Distinguished Lecture Series
James C. Greenwood,
President, Biotechnology
Industry Organization (BIO),
and Former Congressman,
U.S. House of Representatives,
presented a lecture on March
20, 2006 entitled “Living in
the Biotechnology Century”. Mr. Greenwood
currently represents biotechnology companies,
academic institutions, and related organizations
in the research and development of
healthcare, agriculture, industrial and
environmental biotechnology products.
Grace Hopper Lecture Series
Jessica Hodgins, Professor,
Computer Science and
Robotics, School of Computer
Science, Carnegie Mellon
University, was the honored
speaker at the Grace Hopper
Lecture on October 26, 2006,
sponsored by the Department of Computer
and Information Science. Dr. Hodgins’s lecture
entitled, “ Interfaces for Controlling Human
Characters,” explored innovative technologies
currently used in computer animations and virtual
environments for natural human motion.
In Memoriam
William H. Boghosian, Professor Emeritus of
Electrical Engineering at the University of
Pennsylvania, died July 10, 2005, in Drexel
Hill, PA, at the age of 91.
Dr. Boghosian received his bachelor, master,
and doctorate degrees from Penn in 1934,
1935, and 1950 respectively. He began his 25
year career at the University’s Moore School
in 1947 and held a number of positions there.
Dr. Boghosian’s research was in the area of
network theory and design, sensitivity minimization
in active filters, and electrostatic
sensor systems and technology. He was an
active member of IEEE, ASEE, the Franklin
Institute, and the Association of University
Professors.
He is survived by his sons, James and John,
and a grandson, Matthew. His wife, Susan
(nee Kabakjian), died in 1989.
N. Richard Friedman, EE’67, died February
28, 2006, in McLean, Virginia, after a long illness.
Mr. Friedman received a B.S. in
Electrical Engineering from the Moore School
and a Master of Engineering Administration
from George Washington University. He was
Founder, Chairman and CEO of Resource
Dynamics Corporation in Vienna, Virginia,
where he directed strategic business assessments
and advised energy companies on
customer marketing strategies.
He is survived by his wife, Joan, and
son, Andrew.
Raymond S. Berkowitz, whose career as a
Professor of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Pennsylvania spanned 36 years,
died on April 20, 2006 in Philadelphia. He
was 83.
Dr. Berkowitz received his bachelor, master,
and doctorate degrees from Penn in 1943,
1948, and 1951 respectively. While at the
Moore School, Professor Berkowitz supervised
48 doctoral dissertations and 122
master’s theses, an exceptional contribution
to the world’s knowledge base and its engineering
workforce. As a specialist in complex
mathematical signal analysis, Professor
Berkowitz’s research in signal processing
helped advance the development of radar.
Dr. Berkowitz is survived by his wife, Gisha;
sons David, Steven, and Alan; seven grandchildren
and a brother, David.
PENN ENGINEERING n 23

with Sid Deliwala
Sid Deliwala, Manager of the Electrical and Systems
Laboratories, is a fixture in the ESE Department, and has
long been recognized for creating the outstanding
Electrical and Systems Engineering Laboratory.
Can you tell me a bit about the ESE laboratories? I arrived at Penn in
1996 and initiated the revitalization of the ESE Labs. The improvements
resulted in the creation of several new lab courses, better coordination of
class and lab content, and web-based labs. Programming languages and
robotics have become integral parts of the curriculum. ESE lab facilities
have also expanded—we have labs for Senior Design, robotics, CAD/
computations and microcontroller/circuit building.
How has the laboratory experience changed in the last several years?
During the last ten years, the impact of globalization, offshore design and
manufacturing has affected many areas that used to be traditional strengths
of engineering schools. For example, the circuits are now “system on a
chip” designs. While it may sound less hands-on, current software and prototyping
tools allow students to build far more sophisticated projects in a
shorter time. Introduction of low cost microcontroller boards make it a snap
to design intelligent peripherals and sensor networks. ESE freshmen write
Java code for world-class robotic platforms like Rhex, and sophomores will
build circuits to mimic “biological circuits” representing neural stimulation.
These changes have enhanced teamwork skills and created a demanding,
real-world experience for ESE undergraduates.
What do you consider to be the most pressing issues for educating
engineering undergraduates? While technology and innovation have kept
the U.S. in a leading position as an economic superpower, it will be a challenge
to keep pace with our international peers. We need to keep students
interested in pursuing engineering graduate schools. Undergraduate lab
courses can have tremendous impact on a student’s perception of higher
education in engineering. We also need to keep students excited about
engineering and its applications to leadership careers in consulting and
management. Well-rounded courses can bring “design opportunity” to students
and encourage greater participation in both research and tech house
facilities on campus.
Can you tell us about the type of teaching you do in the lab?
In the month of July, I co-teach the Management and Technology Summer
Institute (MTSI) which is intended to give an introduction to engineering to
rising seniors in high school who are potential applicants to Penn’s
Management and Technology program. In August, I present similar material
to pre-freshmen engineering students. During the fall semester, I assist
Professor David Pope in EAS101, “Introduction to Engineering”.
What changes do you see for future engineers? Engineering majors
will have greater overlap and students will need greater interdisciplinary
education. An undergraduate student in engineering will need to learn the
tools to simulate, program and design complex systems. Cleverly crafted
courses create a pedagogical structure for enhancing a student’s ability to
understand design principles that are the foundation for sustaining our
technological edge.
Models of Excellence
Award winner (2000)

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