Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 73, No. 02 1996

Fall 1996

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OUR LATEST RECRUITS...

This year's starting lineup includes some new additions to the team. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ f l MBNA America* Bank, the leading issuer of MasterCard® and Visa" cards, has just been made captain to sponsor the Georgia Tech Alumni Association MasterCard and Visa card program. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^_

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Bright Idea

Philanthropist Tom DuPree (at right with Morgan County Primary School Principal Dr. Wayne Myers) is investing in education and the future.

By Michael Terrazas

26 New Branch of Life

Page 18

Georgia Tech researcher Gary Schuster is shedding light on the future of computer memory. His discoveries could produce a new generation of high-speed memory.

By Hoyt Coffee

32 Very Cool

Reunited classmates Chris Scientists say a newly Watkins and Young Kim discovered microorganism's have forged an innovative genetic code is "like something firm that is gaining out of science fiction." international attention.

By John Dunn

By Hoyt Coffee

Page 32

40 Doomsday 2000 Some computers can't figure out the new millennium.

Their failure could cost American business millions of dollars.

By Gary Goettling

Monika Nikore Photo

Geo John B. Carter Jr., IE '69, Publisher John C. Dunn, Editor Hoyt Coffee, Associate Editor Michael Terrazas, Assistant Editor Everett Hullum, Design Robb Stanek, AE '90, Advertising

Page 47

Alumni Associ

Departments Officers

Feedback

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Our readers are always write.

Tech Notes

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Hollywood looks at a Tech air ace; Olympic impact on admissions undecided; Service awards; Homecoming tales; Knock on vU wood; and Volunteers honored. (i ) } • — \ l/ [

Perspective

Trustees

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Tips on e-mail and World-Wide Web practices.

Pacesetters

46

Congressional aide William Clyburn Riverkeeper Sally Bethea

Research

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Designer drugs; Slurred speech; and Fish-eye views.

Profile

Hubert L. Harris Jr., IM '65, President H. Milton Stewart, IE '61, Past President Francis N. Spears, CE '73, MS CE '80, President-Elect/Treasurer Jay M. McDonald, IM '68, Vice President/Activities N. Allen Robertson, IE '69, Vice President/Communications David M. McKenney, Phy '60, IE '64, Vice President/Roll Call John B. Carter Jr., IE '69, Vice President/Executive Director James M. Langley, Vice President/External Affairs

62

Ron Bayor: Bringing history to life.

Cover: Tech alumnus Tom DuPree is sharing his success. The millionaire restauranteur has become a major benefactor for the Institute's School of Management—and other education ventures.

Photo by Gary Meek

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine (ISSN: 1061-9747) is published quarterly (Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter) for Roll Call contributors by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, Alumni/ Faculty House, 225 North Avenue NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0175. Georgia Tech Alumni Association allocates $10 from a contribution toward a year's subscription to its magazine. Periodical postage paid at Atlanta,GA., and additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Alumni/Faculty House, 225 North Avenue NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0175. Editorial: (404) 894-0760/0761. Advertising: (404) 894-9270.

Fax: (404) 894-5113. E-mail: editor@alumni.gatech.edu

William H. Avery, ChE '65, MS IM '67 Charles W. Bass, IE '69 G. Niles Bolton, Arch '69 Daniel H. Bradley, IM '61 Mary Melinda Coker, EE '87 H. Preston Crum, Arch '67 W. Elliott Dunwody III, Arch '52 Michael P. Franke, IE '66 Phil Gee, IE '81 Sherman J. Glass Jr., ChE '71, MS ChE '72 Marion B. Glover, IM '65 J. William Goodhew III, IM'61 Robert L. Hall, IM '64 Gabriel C. Hill III, Text '57 Douglas R. Hooker, ME '78, MS TASP '85 Calvin D. Johnson, MSci '73 Sharon R. Just, CE '89 John E. Lagana, IE '68 Robert H. Ledbetter Sr., IM'58

Gary S. May, EE '85 S. Howard McKinley, 1M'60 Jean A. Mori, ME '58 James G. Pope, EE '65 A.H. Robbins III, Cls '59 Marvin Seals III, IM '65 Warren D. Shiver, ME '64, MS ME '67 Albert S. Thornton Jr., IM'68 Emily H. Tilden, IE '78, MS IE '79 Herbert S. Upton, EE '65 Charles L. Wallace, IM '64 J. Norman Wells, EE '57 Warren O. Wheeler, EE '63 Paul H. Williams, ChE '60 Janice N. Wittschiebe, Arch '78, M Arch '80 Vincent T. Zarzaca, IE '55, MS IM '66 Stephen P. Zelnak Jr., IM'69

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FEEDB

Crawford Was Superb Teacher The article on Vernon Crawford in the Spring 1996 issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine was excellent. The article concentrates on Dr. Crawford's superb sense of humor, while mentioning how he started as a faculty member in the Georgia Tech School of Physics and advanced into administrative positions, eventually becoming chancellor of the University System of Georgia. But it does not emphasize what a good teacher he was.

As a physics student in the late '50s and early '60s, I was fortunate to be in several of Dr. Crawford's classes. Quite simply, he was the best professor I had when I was at Tech. His wonderful sense of humor was one facet of his great skill in communicating ideas. His lectures were clear and to the point.

There were even a few good jokesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;although jokes were not a major component.

Clearly, Vernon Crawford was a very able administrator, or he could not have risen to the top as he did. It's just a shame he couldn't have continued to teach.

Matthew Lybanon, Phys '60, MS Phys '62 Slidell, La.

Tears of Laughter The article "Vernon's Wit" by Jim Langley in the Spring 1996 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine was wonderful, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. In the 1970s, I worked

as Dr. Crawford's secretary when he was vice president for Academic Affairs.

That experience was one of the highlights of my life. Back then, office equipment was quite different from today's personal-computer-onevery-desk operation.

Would you believe we shared an IBM memory typewriter with the president's office?

Dr. Crawford used a Dictaphone and spoke very distinctly, even dictating commas, periods, etc. One day I was transcribing a speech he was preparing for Sigma Xi. It was a pretty long talk. After a while, the secretary out in the reception area came in and asked, "What are you crying about?" I wasn't crying. I was laughing so hard as I sat there with ear phones on my head trying to type the speech that tears were literally running down my face, and I had to keep wiping my eyes as I typed.

Dr. Crawford was telling about Spring picnics during the early days of the School of Physics. One of the annual events was the softball game between the students and professors, and he hinted at the fact that there was quite a bit of beer-drinking by the students.

He picked out a former student in the audience, Dr. Earl McDaniel

[Phys '48], who was then a Regents' Professor. "At that particular game, Earl was third base," he said and paused. "Now, I don't mean he played third base, I mean he was third base." The entire audience exploded with laughter as Dr. McDaniel grinned, red-faced.

Vernon Crawford's retelling of how Professor [A. L.] Gus Stanford [Phys '52, MS Phys '58] and other students burned him in effigy in physics class is hilarious. Dr. Stanford, now retired, was also a distinguished Regents' Professor.

Dr. Crawford's sense of humor was always just below the surface, even in the most serious or dignified situations. His timing was as precise as Jack Benny's. His speeches should be put into a book.

Elaine Shaw Atlanta

Burning issue Dr. Gus Stanford recalls the "effigy" incident well and says the following account is the flaming truth: Vernon Crawford wasn't burned in effigy, although for a moment he might have thought he was. I was a student in his class, and I sat in the back of the room.

The student in front of me had fallen asleep and had an open loose-leaf notebook. I decided to set it on fire.

As the pages began to burn, I thought the student would wake up and put it right out. He didn't and a big bonfire started. When he woke up, the flames were right in his face; I guess he thought he was in hell or something. He screamed and pitched the book. Vernon turned around and saw all these

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

7

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flaming papers flying across the room at him.

Vernon threw me out of class.

We had a great time. He used to throw me out of that class occasionally, but that was the most spectacular event for which he threw me out of class.

Name Recognition Thanks for the Vernon Crawford stories! Here's another: On my first day at Georgia Tech, there was a reception in the open space of the classroom building where the administration would meet incoming freshmen. I didn't know who to talk to, but I saw that one person, Dr. Vernon Crawford, had my last name, so my parents and I got in line to meet him.

When I got to Dr. Crawford, I shook hands and said, "Hello, my name is Roy Crawford." He said, "My father's name is Roy Crawford." I said, "My father's name is Roy Crawford," and turned to my father, who had been standing behind me but had not heard our introductions. He said, "Hello, my name is Roy Crawford." Dr. Crawford said, "My father's name is Roy Crawford."

My father, who was a junior, said, "My father's name is Roy Crawford." At this point Dr. Crawford had a look on his face as if he'd just met the looniest family from Kentucky. He must have thought we were pulling his leg.

Roy Crawford III, ME 7 3 Whitesburg, Ky.

No "Victim" of Disability The article "Full-Fledged Stars," in the Summer 1996 issue of the alumni magazine did a wonderful

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

job of giving Paralympic athletes and the Paralympic Games the boost we need. Athletes with disabilities train the same and are as competitive as non-disabled athletes, and I commend you for recognizing that and presenting us in a positive light.

One problem that I have with the article, however, is a reference to me as "cerebral palsy victim Linda Mastandrea." People with disabilities such as myself have worked hard and long to be presented as we are—people from a variety of backgrounds, with a variety of life experiences, who just happen to have a disability. I am an accomplished wheelchair athlete, an attorney, a public speaker, a woman, a sister, a daughter—who just happens to have cerebral palsy. I am not a "victim" of my disability, it is a part of me much as my hair color is.

I encourage you to refer to people with disabilities as people first, their disability second, and only if that disability is absolutely relevant to the story. Second, terms like "victim, suffers from, afflicted with," etc. are truly offensive to most people with disabilities. We are just living day to day and like very much to be presented that way.

Linda Mastandrea Elmhurst, III.

Accolades • The Centennial Olympics issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Maga-

zine is without a doubt the best university publication of any kind I've ever seen. The photography is outstanding.

Hal Irvin, Director Continuous Quality Improvement Georgia Tech • The Summer 1996 issue of the Alumni Magazine featuring the Centennial Olympics is absolutely outstanding.

Herbert H. Stuart, BS '51 Nashville, Tenn.

• The text, pictures, graphics and layout of the Spring issue of the Alumni Magazine were all wonderful. I am proud that Georgia Tech puts out a magazine of that caliber.

George W. Fleming Jr., ME '45 Charlotte, N.C. • The Spring issue of the Alumni Magazine featuring Mike Glad's collection [of animation art] was fabulous. The layout was probably one of the best I've seen relating to animation. It's a beautiful magazine.

Chay Reynolds Collector's Showcase Dallas, Texas

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine welcomes letters to the editor.

Please send all correspondence to Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Alumni/Faculty House, 225 North Ave., NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0175. Fax (404) 894-5113.

E-mail: editor@alumni.gatech.edu

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TECH NOTES

Air Ace Tech alum's WWII heroics grab Hollywood's interest

H

ollywood is interested in making a film about the World War II heroics of fighter pilot David McCampbell, Cls '32, the Navy's all-time highest scoring ace.

McCampbell, a retired Navy captain, attended Georgia Tech during 1928-29 before being appointed to the Naval Academy. A resident of Lake Worth, Ha., he died June 30 following a year-long illness. He was 86. His widow,

Olympic Impact?

Applications up slightly, but impact remains uncertain

G

eorgia Tech has had a slight increase in applications for admission from international students, but whether the Olympic Games will result in a surge in student applications is not apparent this early, says Barbara Hall, associate vice president for Enrollment Services.

"It's too soon to tell" if Tech's role as home of the Olympic Village will increase applications for admissions, Hall says. "Our application deadline is Feb. 1.

We're running slightly ahead [of past years] on international applications. But it's too soon to know what the impact is."

In early September, WorldWide Web applications and applications via computer, which usually average about 35 per day, were down, she says.

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GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

Buffy McCampbell, said two different Hollywood producers have expressed interest in making movies about her husband's daring exploits.

McCampbell is credited with 34 air-combat victories and destroying another 24 enemy aircraft on the ground. On Oct. 24,1944, while flying from the aircraft carrier Essex in the Pacific, he and his wingman, Roy Rushing, shot down 15 Japanese fighters.

Edward Sims, a newspaper columnist and author of the book, Greatest Fighter Missions, recounts the event: McCampbell, flying an F6F Hellcat, led a mission of seven fighters when they encountered a huge Japanese force—20 bombers with 40 escorting fighters—apparently searching for the Essex.

McCampbell ordered five of his fighters to attack the bombers while he and Rushing attacked the 40 enemy fighters. The air battle lasted 90 minutes.

"One by one, darting in and out of their formation, the two Americans sent 15 into the Pacific—nine shot out of the sky by McCampbell," Sims says. "That saved the Essex from air attack in the greatest Naval [air] battle of all time."

During his military career, McCampbell was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, three distinguished Flying Crosses, the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star and the Air Medal.

Mrs. McCampbell says her late husband would be a good subject for a Hollywood movie. He was not only heroic, she says, "He was a very handsome guy."

Griffin Award

He was president of the Oglethorpe University Board of Visitors.

Ward, an active member of the Air Force Reserve for 18 years following the Korean War, served as a trustee of the Alumni Association and is currently a trustee of the Alexander-Tharpe Fund. He was a chairman of the Easter Seals Society and a director of the Richmond, Va., American Red Cross. Ward has also been active in the leadership of the American Heart Association, the Boy Scouts, United Way, the Urban League and the Jaycees. He has been active in Georgia Tech clubs in three cities.

The award is named in honor of the late George C. Griffin, a former dean of students at Georgia Tech. It will be presented during Homecoming.

Dryman, Ward share honor for their community service

T

almage Dryman, IM '45, of Atlanta, and S. Joseph Ward, IM '51, of Midlothian, Va., have been awarded the Dean Griffin Community Service Award in recognition of exemplary contributions to Tech and their communities.

Dryman, former president of the Alumni Association, served as chair of the Tech/Georgia Development Fund and on the Investment Advisory Council. He also served as chair of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, on the Goodwill Industries board, on the Boy Scouts national board and on the Cerebral Palsy United of Greater Atlanta board.

Wood Revolution Architecture College, SCM Group to create Wood Technology Lab

G

eorgia's wood products industry could double its impact to $4 billion a year in the next decade through a collaboration between Georgia Tech's College of Architecture and SCM Group, the world's largest manufacturer of industrial woodworking machinery.

Officials from Tech and SCM signed a memo of understanding in August, pledging to create the Advanced Wood Technology Laboratory.

To get the program started, SCM subsidiary Autec Inc. will provide $2 million in machining and manufacturing equipment. Autec will also provide training for Tech personnel, who will develop a pilot

demonstration to attract additional industry participants.

"This collaboration will revolutionize the wood products industry in the United States," said John Gangone, executive vice president of SCMI, a division of Autec. "Our knowledge of woodworking technology, coupled with Tech's research and instructional expertise, creates a powerful partnership."

The new lab will operate in conjunction with Tech's Center for Rehabilitation Technology, Construction Research Center and other units to explore improvements in computer-aided design and manufacturing of wood products.

"This partnership marks an exciting new direction for the College of Architecture and Georgia Tech," said Thomas Galloway, dean of the College of Architecture. "Creation of this laboratory enables the college to align several

Homecoming '96 Tall Tales are gettin'deep

T

all Tales—memorable stories steeped in Georgia Tech's tradition—are the focus of Homecoming '96. In addition to the "Legendary Buzz," the stars of the event will be the thousands of alumni returning for Homecoming Oct. 25 and 26.

Those memorable tales of Tech's past will be a highlight of class reunions. Eleven classes are observing reunions: 1931, 1936, 1941, 1951, 1956, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1976. 1981 and 1986.

If you have a favorite story you want to share, send it to Sarah Boone, assistant director of programs, Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 225 North Ave., Atlanta, GA 30332-0175. A selection of the tales will be printed in Tech Topics.

"We're getting a great response from alumni planning to attend Homecoming," Boone says. "We feel that Homecoming is an ideal opportunity for alumni to share their favorite college memories with classmates."

of its programs to improve and enhance the industry in Georgia, the Southeast and the nation."

Recognition Four receive volunteer awards

F

our Georgia Tech alumni have been presented the Ramblin' Wreck Volunteer of the Year Award in recognition of outstanding contributions to Georgia Tech and the Alumni Association.

The award was presented to Al Argroves, IM '68, Bill Gilliam, IE '58, Laticia Khalif, IE '88, and Gary Sowell, IE '73.

• Argroves has been president of the Southwest Ohio Georgia Tech Club, and he has served on his reunion class committee. A six-year participant in Leadership Georgia Tech, Argroves is active in the President's Scholarship program and is a regular fixture at college fairs in his region.

• Gilliam, active in community service since graduation, has held leadership positions with the Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Houston Georgia Tech clubs. He also is a frequent participant in college fairs.

• Khalif has been a leader in the Minority Affairs Committee of the Alumni Association for six years. A resident of Stone Mountain, Ga., she also worked in the Techwood Tutorial Project and Aim High.

• Sowell has been in the BellSouth Georgia Tech Club since its unofficial days back in 1983, and he was the co-founder of the official group.

He was chair of the Matching Gifts Committee for the 49th Roll Call, and has been the Yellow Jacket representative in the BellSouth employees' club for four years.

Fall 1996 • GEORGIA TECH

11

A special rate for Tech fans only. Weekends throughout football and basketball seasons. Afterward, relax with a drink. Or enjoy dining in The Restaurant or The Cafe. Then settle back in a luxurious room at the heart of downtown

Atlanta. For reservations, call your travel professional or 404-659-0400 or 800-241-3333 and ask about the Yellow Jacket Weekend. For just $L44 a night, you can stay at a legend when you cheer one on.

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Here's how it works. As a participant in the Avis Alumni Association Member Benefit Program, you're entitled to special Avis rates and discounts.

You save money on both business and leisure rentals. And what's more, every time you rent from Avis, a contribution will be made to the Avis/Georgia Tech Alumni Association scholarship fund.

As if that weren't enough, you can take advantage of the coupon on the right for even more savings. For information and reservations, call an employee-owner of Avis at our special Alumni Association Member Services Desk: 1-800-422-3810. And be sure to mention your Avis Worldwide Discount (AWD) number: B105900 Now visit our Avis Galaxy Web Site at: http://www.avis.com 51996 Wizard Co., Inc.

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For information and reservations, call your travel consultant or an employee-owner of Avis at 1-800^831-8000. And be sure to mention your Avis Worldwide Discount (AWD) number B105900.

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PERSPECTIVE

Wired for Business Electronic mail and the World-Wide Web offer effective communications solutions

By Victoria Selfridge

W

hen this decade dawned, electronic mail was limited to a few universities, government agencies and high-tech companies.

And a web was still something you walked into while going for the morning paper.

No longer. Both e-mail and the World-Wide Web, the multimedia component of the Internet, are becoming as ubiquitous as the office coffee machine. While 'Net researchers quote a wide range of statistics for use of both communications tools, their prevalence is obvious.

For example, O'Reilly & Associates estimates the number of Internet users in the United States alone at around 12 million. And WebCrawler, Global Network Navigator Inc.'s Web-tracking project, cites sixfold growth in the number of Web servers over the past year.

"The Web provides a powerful business tool for sharing rapidly changing information," says Florence Kanuk, product manager for Online Research Group, a division of O'Reilly.

As e-mail and the Web become even more established in day-to-day business, it is important not

14

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

only to master the new technology, but to exploit its advantages. There are some basic tips that will not only make these tools more effective, but help users avoid some pitfalls of Internet use.

E-mail

E

-mail is now a common tool for personal and business communication. If properly used, it is a great form of efficient communication that can save time for both sender and recipient.

• Be Concise. The most effective e-mails have the same properties as effective answering-machine messages—brief yet complete, with some type of action requested. How do you achieve it? Lists are excellent. Typically, if the information can be listed, it is both clear and concise. If information in your message requires a lengthy explanation, email might not be the best communication method.

• Watch What You Say. It's easy to overlook the fact that your e-mail could be read not only by the intended recipient, but by a third party. With that in mind, carefully consider whether to include sensitive information. And is the e-mail too personal? If you send personal e-mail from work, consider the im-

pact of your coworkers or boss reading it. In general, think twice before including sensitive information such as your social security, credit card or bank account numbers.

• Watch How You Say It. Casual language and style is more acceptable in e-mail than most other forms of communication, but e-mail users are still divided on just how casual is acceptable. Unless you are well acquainted with the recipient, do not be so casual in style that you incorrectly punctuate, capitalize or spell. In most business situations this type of style is not acceptable and may cause recipients to think of you as unprofessional rather than efficient.

• Don't Overuse It. At work there is the potential for e-mail to become junk mail. Try to keep the number of interoffice e-mails to a reasonable level—around one e-mail per topic, per day. Too much e-mail at work is becoming a problem in business, with workers distracted to the point that it defeats its timesaving purpose.

• Know Your Recipient.

This applies on two levels. First, know a little about the recipient's e-mail application. They may not be able to handle file attachments and other features of the

sender's mail program. Second, ask the recipient if e-mail is a good way to contact him or her. Some newer users may not feel comfortable using it or may check it so infrequently that other communication methods would be more successful.

World-Wide Web

T

he World-Wide Web is quickly growing into a jungle of pages on everything from business to personal history. Take care to create effective pages that will hold Web surfers' attention and bring them back.

• Be Useful. Just because you can create a Web site doesn't mean you must. Sites should have a purpose: to advertise a business' product or service or an individual's skills or projects.

Providing useful information, like contact information on something visitors find interesting, will let them use the site productively. Quality information will keep them at the site longer.

• Be Organized. A common problem, with larger sites in particular, is lack of a clear structure. If "Netizens" cannot find anything of interest, they won't stay long. Clearly defined menus and submenus, dividing a site into related areas, will

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Georgia Teen help visitors locate their interest areas. Use clear language for menus.

There is a tendency to be brief, using one-word titles in an attempt to be concise, when in fact a two- or even three-word title would be more clear.

Other ways to let browsers quickly find their interests are: indexes, the most basic listing of what is in the site; search programs, which allow the user to search for key words; and site maps that chart the site's layout.

• Update Regularly.

Assuming you don't have a Web site of static information, it will require updates. For personal pages, updating may not be as important, but for businesses it is essential.

Set a standard schedule for updating pages, and be aware of all timesensitive information on the site for comprehensive updating. Creating a useful site that is graphically appealing is a good start, but up-to-date information is the element that keeps visitors coming back.

• Carefully Choose Design Elements. Successful Web site design is based equally on the 'Net surfer's computer software and the designer's skill. Carefully consider whether to include design elements in a site that are software-specific,

such as Java or Shockwave, since some users will not be able to view them. View a site with as many different Webbrowsing programs as possible. Different browsers handle the Web's computer language differently, so a good design for one may not look good on another. Try viewing the site with the images turned off to make sure it remains navigable. Also, consider using only 16 colors in images to speed load time.

• Advertise Your Address. After creating an appealing, useful site, get the word out. Include the company's Web address on internal and external publications.

Link the site to major search engines on the Web. Advertising will not only get the word out, but will also produce useful feedback on what areas other people find most useful. Track the number of visits to different areas of the site. This information can be used to develop those areas, making the site more useful to the user, GT

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October 4-6,1996 Savoyards Light Opera - The Pirates of Penzance - $24 Gilbert & Sullivan's merry tale of pirate apprentice, Frederic, is full of great music and laughs. Frederic leaves his pirate lifestyle to lead a band of men against his former mates to atone for his previous ways.

October 18,1996 Flutist, James Galway - $41 With three new recordings to his discography of 50-plus, the world's most famous flutist brings compelling musicianship, a vast virtuoso repertoire and trademark Irish folk melodies to the Ferst Center.

November 9,1996 Comedy on the Edge - $14 Comedic juggler, Mark Nizer, performs and emcee's this fun-filled evening which includes performances by nationally recognized ventriloquist, Lynn Trefzger, and the incomparable hypnotist, Mark Pittman.

November 16,1996 Grand Hotel des Etrangers - $14 You won't believe your eyes in this Virtual Multimedia Performance as you join a young stranger in a cramped hotel room as visions from the past, future, and present appear before him holographically on stage.

November 22-24,1996 Ballethnic - Urban Nutcracker - $11 Choreographed by Ballethnic's co-founder, Waverly Lucas, and set on Sweet Auburn Avenue. "Urban Nutcracker" is to the "Nutcracker" what "The Wiz" is to "The Wizard of Oz".

December 12-22,1996 Jomandi Productions - Black Nativity - $10 "A Christmas Play for All Ages" Jomandi recreates the classic holiday gospel musical featuring a text by Langston Hughes.

Through glorious gospel music and dance, audiences are transported through time from a Harlem church service to the Bethlehem Nativity scene.

February 8,1997 Lula Washington Dance Company - $14 Founded in 1980 as the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theatre, Lula Washington's repertoire includes diverse works ranging from West African dances to abstract modern works, to the traditional dance theatre style.

February 14-16,1997 Savoyards Light Opera - The Merry Widow - $24 The beautiful, rich widow, Hanna, is the target of all the French noblemen in Franz Lehar's light opera. The piece includes some of Lehar's most popular music including "The Merry Waltz".

February 21-23,1997 Ballethnic - The Leopard Tale - $11 Choreographer Waverly Lucas presents this dramatic portrayal of the leopard and his innate survival skills, complete1 with the jungle wilds an various members of the animal kingdom. Drama, power, high energy, and non-stop action mark this as one of the company's more popular ballets.

February 28 & March 1,1997 Pilobolus Dance Theatre - $18 Celebrating their 25th Anniversary, this world reknowned dance company returns to the Ferst Center with their new piece, "A Reduced History of the Universe" - a work co commissioned by Dancers Collective and the Robert Ferst Center.

March 13-16,1997 The Atlanta Ballet - Rite of Spring - $20 In the film, Nijinsky, a young Igor Stravinsky slammed out piano rhythms while Nijinsky yelled at dancers struggling to keep in step with the complex cadences of the 1913 ballet score The Rite of Spring. In 1997, the choreography of Jill Eathorne-Bahr brings a different interpretation to Stravinsky's score. Eathorne-Bahr's is a primitive story of a tribal Matriarch, The First Man and the chaotic and tragic consequences of their union.

March 28 & 29,1997 New York City Opera National Company - La Boheme - $44 After three straight sellout years, this nationally acclaimed Opera Company returns for TWO peformances of Puccini's sentimental glimpse at the lives, loves, sorrows, and joys of four impoverished artists in Paris.

April 10-13,1997 The Atlanta Ballet - DanceTechnology Project "97 - $20 The Atlanta Ballet, Georgia Tech Researchers, and the Robert Ferst Center for the Arts join forces with world renowned choreographer, Danny Ezralow for a full evening of dance, including the world premiere of the latest development for the DanceTechnology Project.

May 3,1997 Peter Schickele - $14 Composer, musician, author, satirist, and host of the weekly, sydicated Public Radio International program, "Schickele M i x " visits the Ferst Center with his unique ability to make classical music more fun lor everyone.

May 16-18,1997 Savoyards Light Opera - The Sound of Music - $24 Sister Maria leads the Von Trapp family into your hearts with some of musical theatre's most famous music: "Climb Every Mountain", "The Sound of Music", and "Do-Re-Mi" among others.

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Corporate Samaritan Philanthropist Tom DuPree is helping Tech's School of Management "get the recognition it deserves"

By Michael Terrazas Photography by Gary Meek

ladison, Ga., is a small rural town (population 3,500) some 65 miles east of Atlanta. Its quiet streets are lined with stately reminders of an era long past, antebellum homes understated even in their elegance. Folks walking past smile at strangers here.

Thomas E. DuPree Jr., IM '74, is a lot like the town in which he based his company, Apple South Inc., a multiconcept restaurant companty most famous for its chain of Applebee's restaurants. Traditional in his values and low-key in his demeanor, DuPree has found a home in which to build in Madison, and build he has. Fact is, even though he may not like it, everyone in the county knows Tom DuPree's name.

"If you want to see something Mr. DuPree has done for this school," says Morgan County Middle School Assistant Principal Tex Duck, "you can just look anywhere. Look anywhere and you will see something."

As much as DuPree may want to avoid the spotlight, he has to deal with his share of it these days. That's just what happens when you make a habit of giving away tens of millions of dollars: Founded in late 1992 as Apple South's philanthropic arm, the DuPree Foundation has given more than $7 million to Morgan County schools to improve their technological and human resources. This in a school system with an annual budget of $12 million.

But, fortunately for Georgia Tech, DuPree's generosity doesn't stop at the county line. Two years ago, the foundation donated $5 million to the School of Management to establish the DuPree Center for Entrepreneurship and New Venture Development. And in May, DuPree pledged an additional $20 million—the largest individual gift in Georgia Tech history—to the School of Management, which in November will be officially renamed the

DuPree School of Management.

"My belief for a long, long time, from the days I was at Georgia Tech, is the most effective degree program we have is in the School of Management," DuPree says. "But even when I was in school, it failed to get the recognition for that, even within the Georgia Tech community, which is unfortunate."

Those days may be gone forever. DuPree's $20 million endowment ranks among the largest individual donations ever to business schools in this country, and Tech administrators have in mind nothing less than to move the DuPree School up to the head of the class.

"The DuPree School will soon join the Sloan School at MIT, the Wharton School at Penn and the Fuqua School at Duke as one of the finest institutions in the country," says Tech President Wayne Clough. "Tom DuPree is the personification of what Georgia Tech seeks to infuse in all our students."

Shaky Start

T

ech officials didn't always have such high praise for DuPree's work. As a student, he flunked out twice, having to plead with registrar Frank Roper to be admitted a third time.

"When I was 19,1 had not a clue what I was going to do, and I had the academic performance to back it up," DuPree admits. "I don't know why he let me back in."

Born in Bainbridge, Ga., DuPree moved with his parents and three sisters to Macon when he was a child.

There he enjoyed a "pretty typical" upbringing, doing well enough in high school to be accepted to Tech, the only university to which he sent an application. Though he says he "wanted to be pushed" in college, DuPree might not have realized just how hard Georgia Tech could shove a less-than-focused student.

"I can remember, the second week in calculus class, having this revelation," he recalls. "Sitting up

TOM DUPREE: "I felt, once I graduated from Tech, I could do anything. There was no job too hard. That persistence, that never-say-die—the foundation of that was absolutely laid at Tech." Dupree is laying other foundations in his hometown of Madison, placing computers and other needed equipment in classrooms and libraries (left).

GEORGIA TECH

The young DuPree identified three industries that best served his ambitions: real estate, computers and restaurants.

in the back of the classroom, I said, 'You know, I could be the dumbest guy in this room.' And that was a shock, because I was used to being able to perform academically without too much worry. I was just amazed at that."

DuPree joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, proceeded to "find a way to have a terribly good time at Georgia Tech," and quickly flunked out. Undaunted, he was readmitted but again was sent home for bad grades.

At that point, he did some soul searching.

"I realized, in that brief period of time, just how important it was to me, and I mean I wanted it," DuPree says. "So I went back, and I convinced [Roper] somehow or another I really meant it this time. He's seen so many kids come in and out of his office, I'm sure he could recognize somebody who was there and somebody who wasn't. But my grades reflected it from that point forward."

It was his fraternity, in fact, that provided the support he needed to buckle down. "The guys there didn't cut me any slack; they'd already been there, done that, and if I didn't perform, then I didn't really have any excuses, and they knew it. Time and again, one of them would say to me, 'Well, this is how I did it, and this is how I made it work for me.'"

Displaying the logical method that would benefit him so greatly later, DuPree set about finding his course in life. He went to the Tech library, a building he admits to not having frequented, and began to pull off the stacks anything that interested him. With an extensive list, he then identified the common traits in each alternative.

With a short list of abstract career elements in hand, DuPree identified three industries that best served each attribute: real estate, computers and restaurants. Following graduation and a short stint in accounting in Macon â&#x20AC;&#x201D;"I wanted a profession to fall back on, because business can be very risky."â&#x20AC;&#x201D;he bought his first restaurant, a Burger King franchise in Toccoa, Ga., without even knowing what the fast-food chain looked like.

"I'd never been in one," DuPree says. "I didn't even know what they sold. But I knew the numbers, and they made sense, and it worked. When I got back in that restaurant, it took us about four months to go from an absolute dying dog to a restaurant that was making money."

Persistence and Growth

A

sked how his budding restaurant entrepreneurship progressed from its modest beginnings, DuPree replies, "Kind of like this," moving his hand like a roller coaster, "up and down."

Starting with $5,100, he bought the first Burger King, then another and then another.

Not everything went as plannedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a computer company he started to service his and other restaurants in the Southeast languished before DuPree trimmed his losses and dropped it. But with dogged determination and careful planning, the chain began to grow.

"I learned at Tech there are no free rides. I felt like, once I graduated from Tech, I could do anything. There was not going to be any job that was too hard. And it was a foundation of persistence, a never-say-die [attitude], that was absolutely laid at Tech."

In 1985, DuPree purchased franchise rights to develop Applebee's restaurants. And since opening his first Applebee's in 1986, he has never looked back. Since 1991, Apple South has grown from 52 to 274 locations, and sales have gone from just under $68 million to $440.2 million in 1995. Besides Applebee's, DuPree's other two main concepts are Don Pablo's Mexican restaurants and Harrigan's bar and grill, located mostly in the Southwest.

Apple South went public in 1991, in what the Wall Street Journal called "the best-performing offering in the Southeast over the past five years." Analysts consider the company to be among the best-run restaurant operations in the country.

Apple South has as its stated mission to be no less than the multi-concept, multibillion and multinational leader in the casual-dining

restaurant industry. Currently in the fourth year of an 11year plan, the company aims to operate more than 300 restaurants by the end of this year and more than 500 by the end of 1998.

To reach his lofty aspirations, DuPree employs the same set of logical tools he did when figuring out his career choice. "How do you solve problems?" he asks.

"However trite or complex those problems may seem, there's a method for going about that, and Georgia Tech taught me to learn how to apply those techniques and make decisions, reach the proper conclusions with them, and have the guts to take the action.

"You can never forget that the only thing of any value is people. There's not a building in Atlanta that has any value but for the people in it. After all, it really comes down to that transaction point between the consumer and the company representative. If that interchange is positive, then you've got a real good chance of being a winner. If it's not, there's a real high likelihood you're going to fail."

Learning is Cool in Morgan County

L

ittle Zachary Yost jumps at the chance to play on a computer. A kindergartener at Morgan County Primary School, Zachary thinks all he's doing by matching the "Q" on the screen with the "Q" on the keyboard is winning a game and being rewarded with an image of

Music classes at the middle school are only one example of improvements made throughout Morgan County schools with money from the DuPree Foundation. "Mr. DuPree said, 'Tell us what you need,'" says Superintendent James Hagin. "No school administrator can ever imagine this taking place."

a queen. But those watching can see Zachary doing something moreâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;learning letter recognition.

The kindergarten classrooms at the primary school are only one example of a host of improvements made throughout Morgan County schools with money from the DuPree Foundation. "Mr. DuPree said, 'Tell us what you need,'" says former Superintendent James Hagin.

"No school administrator can ever imagine this taking place."

Middle school students are learning to play piano through an electronic classroom stocked with Yamaha keyboards and all linked to the teacher's computer at the head of the class. High school biology students can cut into an electronic patient on a computer screen and explore the inner workings of the human body. Teachers can access databases from the University of Georgia education department to aid them in course preparation.

"We've tried to structure our departments very much like a college freshman class would be set," says Morgan County High School Principal Andy Ainslie. "We're getting away from traditional instruction by just teachers, and we're letting the kids work through the labs. That's Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

21

what many colleges are asking us scholarship to Georgia Tech, to be prepared for." including tuition, room and board, books and all fees — evBut county school officials had erything except spending money. to learn to think big in the same In return, the student must proway their benefactor does. vide 80 hours of community serDuPree says when he first apvice in the county at the end of proached administrators and told his or her freshman year. them to draw up a list of things they needed, the list they came "We just want you to give to back with was filled with such the community that helped raise items as "an extra box of chalk, you and got you there," DuPree two more erasers, 50 additional says. "With all its pluses and photocopies. You know, it was minuses, this community helped Administrators submitted a just nothing," DuPree laughs. "So raise you. So let's give something we said, 'Gee, I think we can do back." list of needs that included this for them pretty quick. But Scholarship recipients also are chalk and erasers. DuPree why don't we go back and ask required to fill out the paperwork said, "Gee, we can do this them to dream a little bigger?'" for any other aid for which they are eligible. This money is put After pulling the community pretty quick. But why don't into a pool to fund students who together to discuss the prospects we go back and ask them wish to attend other schools; and hiring a national strategic to dream a little bigger?"

Tech scholarship recipients, in planning group to examine the effect, are themselves funding school system's needs and potengrants for other students. tial, DuPree was finally able to get everyone dreaming on his scale. And from there it Giving Back to Those Who Raised You was just a matter of providing capable hands with the tools they needed. eorgia Tech's School of Management has prepared flyers from stories in Lf.S. News & World Report rank"The structure was already in place," DuPree says. ing the nation's top graduate schools. For business "We had wonderful teachers, administrators and staff schools, the magazine lists the Top 25. At No. 26, Tech's people already, as well as wonderful parents and management school heads the second list, labeled, "The schoolkids. And they were doing well, but they just Second Tier." This will soon change. needed to jump a level. It was a question of resources, more than anything else."

"Lee Iacocca once said, 'We have one and only one Though it's too early to see significant results in the ambition—to be the best. What else is there?'" says Dr. form of test scores and grade-point averages, all one has Art Kraft, dean of the School of Management. "This gift to do is walk into a Morgan County classroom to see puts us on the map. Tom DuPree felt if he made this what these improvements are doing for the students. __ ._ contribution, this could take the school from being a very good school to being "When we walked into the classroom years past, the an outstanding school." students would all look up, because that was the most exciting thing—somebody new coming into the room," The $20 million donation from the DuPree says. "Last year, I walked into the classroom and DuPree Foundation, spread over the they didn't even know I was there. They were all busy. next five years, will be used to hire eminent faculty, recruit "The neat thing is to see kids turning on to stuff. I outstanding students and don't know how it's always been, but I can tell you today improve infrastructure. that learning is pretty cool in Morgan County."

Already, Kraft explains, the And DuPree is willing, if the students work hard school has premier scholars enough, to carry that generosity forward right through from around the country in its college: The foundation offers, for any student who comsights, and it is only a matter of pletes grades 9 through 12 in Morgan County, a full

G

Continued on page 24

22 GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

Molding Future Entrepreneurs DuPree Center's offerings add depth, insight to revamped, expanding School of Management

E

istablished in July of 1994 to foster entrepreneurship among faculty and students at Georgia Tech, the DuPree Center for Entrepreneurship and New Venture Development is poised to become a driving force in the newly renamed DuPree School of Management.

Through outreach programs, course offerings and research, the DuPree Center tries to spread entrepreneurial concepts both to varied academic disciplines at Tech and to private enterprise outside the Institute. The center conducts seminars and roundtables, and it cooperates with the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) to assist entrepreneurs in their efforts.

Dr. Terry Blum, the newly appointed director of the center, plans to expand the center's research base to foster activity across a wider range of ventures.

"We'll be gathering information to deal with development in Georgia, both in the [urban Atlanta] empowerment zones, dealing with minority and women's entrepreneurship issues, and with issues primary to the 25 percent of the state's population that lives in rural areas," Blum says.

America's Favorite Chicken is one company that has worked with the DuPree Center to provide workshops for would-be minority entrepreneurs. Renewed for this year, the program involves a oneday seminar designed to provide the basic skills people need to start businesses in today's economy.

The seminars take place four times a year.

"The DuPree Center has been

the basis for extending the entrepreneurship concept across many disciplines at Georgia Tech," says Art Kraft, dean of the DuPree School of Management. "Out of the center grew the idea of the entrepreneurship in electrical engineering program and the program, Global Innovation for Engineers."

Though the center does provide some training for young businesspeople, it approaches the concept of entrepreneurship from a more academic, philosophical, research-oriented angle than does the ATDC. The center funds in part the research activities of roughly 20 faculty members in the management school.

The center's benefactor is pleased with its progress to date.

"We've moved way up the charts in terms of recognition for entrepreneurial efforts in academic circles," says Thomas E. DuPree Jr., whose $5 million endowment in 1994

established the center. "Its component for the minority community is very important. You can't sit on the sidelines and wonder why something doesn't happen; you've got to get involved in helping that happen."

Blum feels, along with management of technology and international business issues, that entrepreneurship will be onethird of the engine behind the DuPree School in the future.

"We're going to be a driver in the continued escalation of excellence of the school," Blum says.

"The school having its own endowment will create a legitimacy that will attract the attention of other people and resources, including money, that will enable us to become a premier public school that's competitive with the top-ranked business schools in the nation." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Michael Terrazas

Deans Robert Hawkins (left) anil Art Kraft will be stewards of the DuPree School.

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

23

DuPree's goal isn't to make more money; it's to help people realize their potential and to teach them the importance of sharing what they've earned and learned. time before the three or four endowed chairs sure to be created by the DuPree gift will begin to be filled.

"This gives a very big challenge to the school to utilize the funding to accomplish the objectives that Tom DuPree, the faculty and I have for the school, which is to be among the front ranks of small, technologically oriented business schools in the country," says Dr. Robert Hawkins, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Management, Policy and International Affairs.

DuPree's goal in providing this contribution is to draw more recognition to the program from which he graduated, a program he feels has been underappreciated in the past. "A lot of it has to do with emphasis," DuPree says. "The emphasis frankly was not put on recognition; the emphasis was put on results, and I think that results are exactly what transpired."

Citing budget restraints in government funding for Tech, DuPree says his goal is to provide a much-needed supplement to state money. He, along with Hawkins and Clough, sat down and figured out exactly how much it would take to lift the school to where it needed to be. As far as accountability goes, DuPree is more than happy to let Tech administrators do what they do best.

"You go to the people who are the experts, and the experts are people like Wayne Clough, people like Bob

24

GEORGIA TECH â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 1996

Hawkins," DuPree says. "Those guys know how to make it happen, and I have every confidence they do. They have done a very good job of being good stewards with people's desires, with people's financial commitments and time commitments to the Institute."

No Sign of Slowing

C

ertain structures in Morgan County that have been built or improved with DuPree Foundation money bear a brass plaque explaining the foundation's involvement. "The reason we decided to do that is [if we didn't] people will assume it just happened," DuPree says.

"There needs to be some identifying method by which they know, 'Oh, that's how that happened. Somebody gave. Well, gee, maybe I can give sometime.'"

If Tom DuPree's goal was to make money, he would have quit a long time ago. What DuPree really enjoys now is helping people realize their potential and teaching them the importance of sharing what they've earned and learned.

"That's a kick; that's a blast," he says. "And that's something I don't envision me outgrowing. I mean, all of a sudden I don't want to help people? That's pretty dumb. For sure, I'll do things in a different way in the future, but hang it up? How boring." GT

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New Branch of Life Scientists say microorganism's genetic code is "like something out of science fiction"

By John Dunn

, Georgia Tech researcher is among a team of scientists announcing the genetic blueprint of a puzzling microorganism plucked from the hot sea vents of a "white smoker" on the Pacific Ocean floor—a DNA blueprint some scientists say reveals a previously unknown life-form.

A scientific milestone, researchers published the startling results of the complete genome sequence of the microbe Metlianococcus jaimaschii in the Aug. 23 issue of Science magazine. Mark Borodovsky, a senior research scientist in Tech's School of Biology, is one of several co-authors.

M. jannaschii, a single-cell, methane-producing organism that is a member of Archaea, was discovered in 1983 at the base of thermal vents almost two miles deep in the Pacific Ocean, thriving at 185 degrees Fahrenheit—water hot enough to cause first- or second-degree burns—and in the absence of oxygen. < Formerly known as archaebacteria, Archaea (Greek for ancient) have baffled scientists since their discovery in 1977, when Carl Woese, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana, suggested that they are a distinct lifeform. Woese and colleague George Fox used "molecular phylogency" techniques to discover the organism's uniqueness. It defies classification in either of the two recognized life groups: prokaryotes (bacteria) or eukaryotes (animals, plants, fungi and protozoa). Woese's theory, however, was rejected by the academic community.

"In decoding the genomic structure of M. jannaschii, we were astounded to find that twothirds of the genes do not look like anything we've GEORGIA TECH'

Photos courtesy TIGR

ever seen in biology before," says Dr. J. Craig Venter, president and founder of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), a nonprofit organization located in Rockville, Md. "This brings to closure the question of whether Archaea are separate and distinct lifeforms."

Distinct Life-forms enter, who coordinated the mapping of the microbe's more than 1,700 genes, says the findings essentially confirm that Archaea are a distinct form of life, capable of thriving in environments in which other forms of life perish.

M. jatvtascliii is "like something out of science fiction," Venter says.

"Our understanding of this organism significantly increases the likelihood that life exists on other planets," Venter adds. "We know from this genomic sequence that life has other parameters and may exist in ways that will revolutionize our thinking."

Borodovsky began working with Venter's team more than a year ago as a result of his successes in identifying and annotating genes in DNA sequences Ml I'M. â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

27

with a computer method developed in his lab and known as GeneMark.

Named after the mathematical theory of Markov models that it uses and the concept of "marking genes," GeneMark can determine the regions of a DNA sequence carrying genetic code for protein molecules and indicate them as genes.

"In two genomes of bacterial species that were completed by Venter's team last year, the GeneMark program had a success rate of 93 to 97 percent," Borodovsky says.

GeneMark's Mark

S

ince 1993, when the GeneMark program began working as an e-mail server, it has helped to identify more than 5,500 genes in different genomes. Last year, the lab received more than 30 requests from universities, as well as from pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies around the world, to provide GeneMark programs for their use.

"We have demonstrated that our method is able to identify new genes in DNA sequences, already submitted to public databases, previously unnoticed by researchers." Borodovsky says. "It is a very sensitive gene-detecting method."

The genomic DNA sequence of M. jannaschii consists of 1,739,933 nucleotides. Venter's group sent Borodovsky a sequence of the whole genome for scrutiny by the GeneMark program, a task complicated by the fact that there was no prior experimental knowledge of any part of this genome.

"We managed to train GeneMark" to understand the sequences, Borodovsky says, "and, subsequently, the GeneMark predicted genes in the M. jannnschii genome.

The majority of these genes were not identifiable by other methods since protein products of these genes were not similar to any known protein.

"The Science paper reports a kind of unexpected result—the genome itself doesn't look similar to anything which was known before," Borodovsky says. "This is a big discovery.

"We have predicted there are genes, but what are their functions?" Borodovsky asks. "The next step is to understand what these genes are for."

A native of Russia, Borodovsky received his master's and doctoral degrees at the Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow, the leading university in the field of physics and technology in the former Soviet Union.

Borodovsky came up with the concept of GeneMark in 1986, when he was a senior research scientist at the Mos28

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 19%

cow Institute of Molecular Genetics, conducting research and analysis on DNA sequences.

"It was so academic, so basic, that I didn't realize it could become a real thing," Borodovsky says. "It was, of course, a vision that could be used for a practical purpose. But at that moment, I saw it from such a distance—and what is reality, especially over there—it was like a crazy dream."

In Russia, Borodovsky / wrote a book on the computer analysis of genetic text describing the approaches and methods of interpreting genomes. It has never been translated into Electron micrograph of English. During that time of Methanococcus jannaschii, political turmoil, however, stained with uranyl acetate the Soviet Union had no to show the two bundles of polar flagella (arrows). interest in pursuing his research.

In 1990, Borodovsky made a speech at Georgia Tech.

"Shortly after that talk, I was invited to work at Georgia Tech," he says. He received a National Institute of Health grant to continue his research and "some very enthusiastic, bright Ph.D. students" to work with. Although his background is applied mathematics, for the past 10 years his work has been in biological applications.

More Time for Biology

A

senior research scientist since 1992, Borodovsky has been named a full professor and will devote twothirds of his time to biology and one-third to mathematics. His wife, Nadia, is also a research scientist in biochemistry at Tech. Their daughter, Anna, is a senior at Emory University, and their son, Alex, is a junior in high school.

The M. jannaschii research effort funded by the Department of Energy is spearheaded by TIGR, the University of Illinois at Urbana and Johns Hopkins University.

Hazel R. O'Leary, secretary of Energy, says the biotechnology industry is watching research on Archaea

Research on Archaea may lead to new sources of renewable energy and improvements in human health.

closely to see how this "breakthrough can help develop new sources of renewable energy, clean up the environment and improve human health."

Because it lives only at high temperatures, the microorganism's molecules are heat stable, which DOE says is a desirable property for many industrial and pharmaceutical processes. The microbe's complete genome offers the opportunity to develop heat-resistant products, such as new detergent additives or stable enzymes, for the textile and chemical industries.

Understanding how M. jannnschii produces methane

could help researchers learn to genetically engineer organisms to produce quantities of methane for use as a source of renewable energy and synthetic chemicals, DOE says. It also appears to produce metal-binding proteins that transport toxic compounds out of the cell, with potential applications for the concentration and clean-up of toxic wastes.

Venter, who founded TIGR in 1992 as a nonprofit arm of Human Genome Sciences, adds, "Our research today only begins to unlock the door to an infinite body of knowledge about life in the universe." GT GeneMark analysis in the bioinformatics lab.

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

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Very Reunited classmates Chris Watkins and Young Kim forge an innovative firm that's gaining international attention

By Hoyt Coffee Photography by Gary Meek

I

It's said chance favors the prepared mind.

And when old high school pals and fellow Georgia Tech students Chris Watkins and Young Kim happened across each other in a local restaurant, chance found them prepared to take Watkins' company to a new level.

Chatting over lunch, the partners-to-be discovered they shared a common vision from vastly different perspectives—Watkins as a technical wizard, Kim as a solid businessman—a vision of a technology company with both innovative products and management.

A year later, Algorithm Inc. has contracts with the likes of Thomson Entertainment, the $17 billion French technology conglomerate, and products that earned the firm a spot on Fortune magazine's list of the nation's 25 "very cool" companies.

Originally founded in 1982, when Watkins was a high school student, Atlanta-based Algorithm existed as something of a think tank—gradually moving from three-dimensional computer games, control systems and electronics for music to producing software, books and 32

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

CD-ROM titles—until Kim, who earned an MBA from Oklahoma City University after graduating from Tech, brought aboard his "customer-oriented focus."

"Before that point it was primarily rent-a-brain research oriented," says Watkins, EE '89. "A few products were developed but with no focus on trying to build a company. It was intellectual play time that

made money.

Since then, we've been focused on the building of a company and a culture, the things that we really need in order to achieve the long-term goal and

vision that both of us have."

That goal is nothing less than to be all 25 "very cool" companies by spinning off "bubbles" of technology into new companies and moving from entertain-

THE ALGORITHM TEAM: The goal is to create "a campus where the best minds freely create to benefit society."

ants, have taken on cuttingedge projects and embraced a unique management style that focuses on accountability and initiative.

"We try to have everyone abide by a certain set of principles, and let individuals act for themselves—as long as they abide by that set of principles," says Kim, APhy '87. "One of the fundamental principles is that you must make a decision in this order every single time: First, you do whatever you do, but it must be best for the customer.

Second, you do whatever you do for your team members. Third, you do whatever is best for yourself—in that order, every single time."

Customer Focus ment-oriented computer graphics and simulation to training, medical and Internet applications. Toward that end, Algorithm's half-dozen "core team members," along with coop students and consult-

W

hile "customer focus" sounds cliche in business these days, it's at the heart of Algorithm's operations. Even the creative process to which Watkins and Kim subscribe— "sequence-independent problem solving" or step-

ping back into the "old scientists' shoes" to see a problem from its original perspective—is trained on the end user.

"We don't follow what everybody else does and branch off of that," Kim says. "We look at the problem the way it really is.

What's the client really wanting, and how can we help them do that the most cost-effective way?

"If we look at the problem and define it like that, then the way to approach the solution is rather simple. We try to look at the customer's problem a little more from their perspective—not only from an engineering perspective, but from a business perspective."

For Algorithm, costeffective means using lowrisk, proven technology— intelligently integrated— and using only the technology really needed to solve a problem, although they will go to the "bleeding edge" when needed. For example, in upgrading Thomson's motion-based thrill-ride simulator to an interactive gaming platform, Algorithm is abandoning the high-end workstation currently used to coordinate video with physical motion. Instead, Watkins and Kim are using

an everyday Pentiumbased PC, dramatically cutting Venturer S2's production cost while maintaining its impressive realism. Likewise, the stereoscopic virtual-reality "periscope" they are developing for Immersive Technologies Inc., called Kimera, utilizes PCs to create a three-dimensional world for game players, a technological backtracking that baffles some.

"The fundamental step is to lead them along a path where this is going to work in a consumer market," Kim says. "So we say, 'Hold on a second. How can we get the performance of a supercomputer out of a PC?' That mental shift is very difficult for a lot of people accustomed only to high-end equipment to do."

Making such a mental shift, using sequence-independent problem solving to find solutions outside the mainstream, is key to Algorithm's customerfocused approach to business.

"The best possible business model we can follow is evolution," Kim says.

"You've got to adapt, be flexible to survive. If you have the mentality of not looking at the problem and adapting to that, you are Fall 1996 • GEORGIA TECH

33

"We want to have that intensity, but we also want to provide a loose, casual, moderate, team concept."

going to die—especially in this business. So we always look at how to adapt to the situation."

Dress for Success

I

n a small shop like Algorithm's, flexibility also means each team member has to wear several hats—or more correctly, several shirts. Engineers have to consider not only the technical aspects of the job they're working on, but also the business side: management and operations.

Kim, a pilot who logged more than 320 combat hours during Operation Desert Storm, called on his military experience to encourage employees to look at their jobs from multiple angles, adopting some techniques used aboard aircraft carriers.

"You can tell the roles of people on the flight deck by the color shirts they wear," he says. "Red is probably the fuel guy, for instance. I took that and applied it to a company environment. A small company that's lean, aggressive, adaptable and flexible has got to have people who have multiple roles. So I thought, 'How about just a visual cue?'" As a result, Algorithm's employees wear different colored knit shirts—green for engineers, white for managers, blue for operations— to remind themselves to look at their jobs from

34

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

different perspectives.

"I don't care if I'm an administrative assistant, an engineer, an operations person—it doesn't matter.

I'm wearing white today, so I'm going to think about management. How can I help Algorithm from a managerial perspective? If I wear blue, how can I help Algorithm from an operations perspective?"

Changing perspectives, accountability and initiative add up to what Watkins likes to call selfgovernment, and it's up to he and Kim to provide the environment in which Algorithm's engineers can practice it effectively. That environment is producing a lot of firsts for the company. For example, Algorithm produced the first World-Wide Web authoring tool on compact disc, and Watkins' book on ray tracing was one of the first accepted as both a university textbook and a mass-market publication.

"From a technical point of view, it's creating an environment where you don't creatively jam someone, yet you relay a sense that things are urgent," Watkins says. "If we're going to continue to be first, things are going to have to get done. We must meet a set of favorable future circumstances with the right knowledge, tools and attitude. So there has to be some structure to what we are doing.

It's actually setting up the situation where there's a balance between structure and creativity, where you get the best of both without the worst of either."

Balancing Act

W

atkins and Kim abandoned convention in creating Algorithm's workplace, choosing instead a loosely structured environment that acts as a stepping stone to their 20-year vision of creating a "campus where the best minds freely create to benefit society."

Employees have no set hours, and there is no vacation policy; Algorithm's engineers work or play at whatever time is best for the customer, the team and the individual—in that order.

"The corporate structure most people look for is not here," Kim says. "It's funny how we get more productivity out of folks than we would if they were coming in at 8:30 and leaving at 5:30. When they drive home, they're thinking about work. When they drive to work, they're thinking about work. It's automatic, and I think it has something to do with our culture—the fact that it's fun and the fact that everybody really matters.

"Our co-op student can say, 'Hey, this game just isn't fun.' We go, 'Stop, what's wrong here? Why isn't this guy—who by the way plays games all sum-

mer and gets paid for it— having fun?' Chris and I stop and listen." They aren't afraid to let their clients have a listen, either.

When a top Thomson executive recently visited the company lab in John's Creek, part of the Technology Park/Atlanta complex,

A chance meeting led old high school pals and fellow Tech students Chris Watkins (left) and Young Kim to discover ways to combine their talents to take Watkins' company to a new level.

some pretty intense people, programmers," Kim says.

"They really have to get into it. If they get interrupted all the time, the productivity goes way down.

"Mornings are like fun time. But come afternoon, as a general concept, we want to work like Germans. We want to have that intensity, but we also want to provide a loose, casual, moderate, team concept."

Trained on Training

A

Watkins and Kim invited their co-op student to participate in the meeting and evaluate the product.

On a typical day, Algorithm's engineers spend the morning interacting, conducting discussions and brainstorming sessions, aligning work

efforts or just socializingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; often a source of unexpected inspiration. Afternoons, though, are reserved for the kind of uninterrupted, focused work required of advanced programming and hardware design.

"You're talking about

lgorithm's mission statement makes clear what the future holds for Watkins, Kim and company: "As leaders in immersive simulation, we desire to take our technologies developed for the entertainment industry and apply them to training, to medicine and to the Internet."

"When you're in training, it's boring; it's not fun," Kim says. "Make it fun, and they'll learn something; they'll come back to play it again and again.

How do you make it fun?

Where do you learn the lessons to make things fun, the psychology of it? The best proving ground is entertainment."

"We want people to be participants, not just spectators with their entertainment," Watkins says.

"This requires a good understanding of how humans really interface with

machines."

A good example is the motion-based platform Algorithm is working on with Thomson. With its ability to mimic sensations like G-forces, it's ideal for training pilots. In fact, the technology is already being used that way. But as Watkins and Kim incorporate interactive three-dimensional graphics while taking hardware requirements down a notch, it becomes a much more affordable proposition.

Algorithm has already made inroads into medical applications, marketing "Compu-Ceph," which allows dentists to combine photographs and X-rays to give patients a preview of the effects of dental procedures. And in addition to tools for creating Web pages (see www.algorithm.com) or for Internet instruction, Algorithm has attracted the attention of Fortune 500 companies with a program called WatchDog. Originally designed to let parents know what their children are looking at on the 'Net, WatchDog has been adopted by many companies to monitor employees' computer use.

Whether or not Watkins, Kim and their whole Algorithm team will achieve their vision remains to be seen. But judging by what they've already done, Algorithm's future is sure to be very cool, GT Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

35

is Dog IVfff Hunt Algorithm's Internet "WatchDog" only one of many ventures for the growing company

w

hen Fortune went hunting for this year's group of "very cool" companies, it caught scent of Algorithm Inc. because of the company's attempt to take a byte out of pornography on the Internet.

And while Fortune saw an analogy to George Orwell's "Big Brother" in Internet WatchDog—a monitoring program adopted as a productivity tool by at least 25 Fortune 500 companies—Algorithm founder Chris Watkins says his creation was intended as anything but sinister.

"The whole point of WatchDog was to take power out of our hands and put it in parents' hands, because we're in no position to force our value systems on others," says Watkins, EE '89, president and CEO of Algorithm.

Rather than attempting to block access to offensive World-Wide Web sites, which is impractical considering the Web's proliferation, Internet WatchDog monitors computer use and takes snapshots of the screen.

These snapshots are collected on a grid that parents can later review to determine what their children are looking at in much the same way that a telephone customer reviews monthly bills to see who their children are calling.

WatchDog runs invisibly in the background, and it is password protected so tampering can be detected.

Several companies discovered WatchDog and put it to use monitoring their employees' "Web surfing" habits.

"Companies these days are run on computers. It is their business," says Young Kim, APhy '87, 36

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

Algorithm's chief operTechnologies, ating officer. "Whether • « * Kimera is a periit's a law firm or whatscope-like device ever, it's all done on y that puts the user computers. It's just that in a realistic threethere has not been a mechadimensional environnism that gives you control of ment similar to that your company. created by virtual-reality helmets.

"Technology is just zooming by But it doesn't require a full-time people. It has this tremendous attendant. benefit, but no one is looking at Mounted on gimbals with counthe tremendous costs. In our own terweights to keep it balanced, way, we're trying to offset the cost Kimera uses two miniature video of technology." monitors, one for each eye, to accurately replicate three-dimensional vision. Players use twin Venturer and Other handles with triggers to navigate Ventures the platform's virtual world, and body motion is translated bv two Internet WatchDog isn't the only Pentium computers into movement thing Algorithm is doing that's within the digital environment. "very cool": The Immerse-O-Scope boom's video inputs are based on actual • Venturer S2 Interactive human sensory perception, taken Looking like a bright from biomechanical data. The yellow minivan sans the wheels, gaming environment can be Thomson Entertainment's upgraded on a regular basis, Venturer S2 closes to seal in two increasing the machine's consumer riders, then treats them to a videoappeal. disk and motion-platform simulation that realistically mimics a roller-coaster ride.

• Compu-Ceph, Algorithm is taking that conPresent It! and Create It! cept a step further with Venturer These three Windows-based S2 Interactive, which uses the video software programs are used by and aircraft-simulator motion base orthodontists and oral surgeons to to replicate air combat or any other give patients a realistic view of the situation Watkins and Kim can results of pending treatment or imagine. surgery.

Unlike its predecessor, the Compu-Ceph allows orthodoninteractive version uses a Pentiumtists to meld X-rays and photos to based PC like those found on project the results of treatment, as desktops everywhere, instead of a well as archive records in images. high-end workstation, dramatiPresent It! and Create It! serve cally cutting production and consimilar functions, providing a sumer costs. graphical interface for patients in which they can easily assimilate complex procedures.

• Kimera Being developed for Immersive —Hoyt Coffee

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Doomsday Some computers can't figure out the new millennium

By Gary Goettling Illustrations by Mac Evans

I

It's 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31,1999. The countdown begins for the famous ball mounted atop a flagpole overlooking Times Square. A minute later, millions of people cheer the arrival of the year 2000. But to hundreds of thousands of computer programs, the new year may as well be 3000. Or 1900.

Many computer programs use an MM/DD/YY format for the date. That's been fine so far, but what happens when the clock ticks over from 99 to 00?

Although seemingly trivial, the way computers track time could have a profound effect on business if programs cannot compute that 00 follows 99.

An insurance company's computer, for instance, may look at a person born in 1955, subtract 55 from 00, and determine his age to be minus 55 instead of 45.

Inventories could sort items with a 00 date as the oldest rather than the newest items. A check written on Dec. 31,1999, for a January 2000 car payment could be rejected by computers thinking the draft is 99 years old.

"It's a very serious problem," says Dr. Peter Freeman, dean of the College of Computing. "Almost all of our economy operates on computers, which need to know dates in making financial transactions."

While some programs might not work at all, a greater danger is posed by programs that begin processing incorrect information. Such errors could take months to unravel and could conceivably put a company out of business.

Though most often associated with mainframes, PC and workstation users should also be aware of the possible consequences of year 2000 problems, and be sure the data they process from other sources will not be affected.

Written into programs at a time when storage was more expensive than it is today, the two-digit year takes minimum space. And few thought that programs devised decades ago would still be in use by the turn of the century.

Generally, programs written in the past 10 years or so take the year 2000 into account. But many COmpa-

40

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

l . M <''/»•*-'*'

nies still rely on a patchwork of applications and programs, parts of which may be 30 years old.

While experts agree the potential for trouble is real, opinions vary greatly on the impact of the probscenario: Yo lem come 2000. Some call it Doomsday 2000, while others compute downplay the widespread-disaster sort items scenarios. Still, there are only your wai guesses. As Freeman notes, "The paradox is there's almost no way of house really knowing how big a problem date. At ti it is without fixing it."

00 date,< your olde items becorr your newe items. Thai only one the messt hat promis to keep coi puter expei working, at I.S. busine spendin before tr mtury turr

Grasping the Problem

T

he extent of a company's exposure depends on the nature of its programs. According to Freeman, a company needs to determine the size and scope of the project first. System models must be built, prioritized, and a change strategy selected. Examining a company's programming is tedious and time-consuming workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and time is short.

"Many older programs were written by people who are no longer with the company, and who did not leave any documentation," Freeman says. "In many cases, these programs have assumptions and design decisions embedded in them, which means date codes could be located in hundreds of places. Even if you could change them, just finding all of them would be difficult."

For example: Suppose a company has only 10 primary applications with 500 programs each. That's 5,000 modules that need to be examined, modified and tested. Allow one day for each of those tasks, and

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

41

you're looking at 5,000 days of work. There are fewer than 1,500 days left until the year 2000. Realistically, it would take several programmers to meet the 2000 deadline.

The cost would be tremendous. In fact, The Gartner Group, a technology research company in Stamford, Conn., estimates large businesses will spend $100 billion between now and the end of the decade to make computer systems "2000-compliant."

"If customers are to be successful in tackling the year 2000 issue, they need to focus on specific date-change methodologies, process and project management," says

Gartner's John Phelps.

Companies such as IBM have a strong interest in fostering awareness of the year 2000 problem.

According to William T. "Thomas" Smith Jr., 1M 70, IBM's vice president and general manager in Atlanta, "We're strongly encouraging customers whose businesses typically rely on applications that make forecasts, projections, comparisons or arithmetic operations to complete their preparations for year 2000 date changes now.

To that end, IBM has assembled a variety of information and support related to the upcoming decade, Smith says, including a document titled The Year 2000 and

Dr. Peter Freeman of the College of Computing can relax with his feet up: he's got the school's computers ready for the 21st century. If only American businesses were so prepared.

choices lace the sting grams. her choic I be costl

42

GEORGIA TECH â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 1996

stems c tly venture, with intee of success.

Two-Digit I lates: A Guide for Planning and Introduction.

"The booklet is available free of charge from IBM representatives, or from our Web site at http:// www.soltvvare.ibm.com," Smith says. "The guide is also useful for non-IBM users as well."

Make No Assumptions

A

business should "get with its information services department and test its applications to verify whether or not they will handle the rollover," says Deborah Williamson, IM 79, MS IM '83, a systems analyst for Unisys. "I wouldn't assume anything."

Companies that have determined they are at risk for year 2000 problems basically have two choices: change or replace the existing programs.

As mentioned earlier, updating old systems could be a costly venture, with no guarantee of success. While it is not technically difficult to expand the date field from two to four digits, it is extremely labor-intensive. Another option would be to represent each century with a numeric code, such as 0 for 19 and 1 for 20. Yet another alternative would be to employ a windowing technique that figures the first two digits of the year based on the last two digits. If the year digits fall between, say, 50 and 90, the computer assumes a 19 goes before them. Numbers between 00 and 49 would get a 20.

The latter two options may seem cleaner and faster, but they present the greater risk for error because they involve changing the programming itself.

"Whenever you go in and change a program, something else often gets messed up in the process," Freeman notes.

Any of the three options will also require testing when the project is finished to make sure everything works. And whatever method is used should be adopted company-wide to ensure compatibility among different systems and among all end-users of the data.

Year 201)0 problems will be a big problem for companies that ignore them, said John Jennings, IE '65, a systems engineer with IBM. But, he adds, "it hasn't really been an issue with most of the companies I deal with. They are replacing their

code on a pretty regular basis anyway, because their business conditions are changing."

Williamson also says that a piecemeal approach may be the most realistic course.

"From a financial standpoint, companies can't throw out their old programs overnight," she says. "They may be better off rewriting code where necessary or replacing the most critical programs."

Whether or not the new decade brings economic disruption because of two-digit date codes is a matter of much coffee-break speculation among computer professionals. One thing is certain: We'll all know for sure on Monday morning, Jan. 3, 2000. GT Gary Goettling is a freelance writer in Tucker, Ga.

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

43

For You! D

NTRAV and the Georgia Tech Alumni Association have formed an exclusive partnership to bring you deluxe travel programs. We look forward to making your travel experiences in 1997 EXCEPTIONAL!

The leading operator of deluxe, escorted international travel programs, INTRAV has provided the winning edge with Georgia Tech Alumni travelers for more than 10 years. Together we offer unmatched comfort, camaraderie and convenience.

Deluxe accommodations-the finest ships-personable INTRAV Travel Directorsexclusive Concierge service at INTRAV Hospitality Desks-exclusive sightseeingthese are just a few hallmarks of INTRAV/Georgia Tech travel.

Trans-Panama February 1-11 This winter, sail from sea to shining sea aboard the Royal Princess on an 11 -day Trans-Panama Canal air/sea cruise.

Dutch Waterways May 22-June 2 Our 12-day Dutch Waterways and London adventure features Holland, Belgium and England.

China and the Yangtze River May 21-June 5 A 16-day China and the Yangtze River adventure features Beijing, Xian, Chongqing and Hong Kong.

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Blue Danube June 27-July 7 In 1997, join an 11 -day adventure to Germany, Austria, the Slovak Republic and Hungary.

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Wings Over the Okavango September 3-17 Join a private deluxe Wings Over the Okavango Safari limited to just 22 guests.

For reservations or free travel brochures, contact: The Georgia Tech Alumni Association Alumni/Faculty House, Atlanta, GA 30332-1075 (404) 894-9278 or 1-800-482-5867

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Washington Whirl William Clyburn, legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Chuck Robb,.wasn't hired as a "yes man'

By Tom Nugent

A

lumnus William Clyburn Jr., has had some "obstacles" to overcome en route to his current post as a top legislative aide to U.S. Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Va., but one of the most memorable was his introduction to William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

It happened in the summer of 1980, when Clyburn—then a freshman at Aiken (S.C.) Senior High School—showed up for his first day of football practice.

"I weighed exactly 113 pounds," the affable and easygoing senatorial assistant recalls, "and Mr. Perry [later a star lineman for the Chicago Bears] weighed about 290. And there was one other difference between us: Perry was faster than I was."

He paused for a moment, remembering how The Fridge flattened him during the practice session, leaving him "looking up at the blue sky."

The 30-year-old attorney then breaks into his signature laugh: a mellow baritone, the mirth of a man who has learned to roll with the punches, political or otherwise.

"You don't need a Georgia Tech engineering degree to understand what happens when 290 pounds hits 113."

As commerce counsel to Robb, Virginia's two-term junior senator (who gained national fame nearly three decades ago when he married President Lyndon B. Johnson's daughter, Lynda Bird), Clyburn, CerE '89, has grown accustomed to "overcoming obstacles" and "facing up to challenges." He zooms through a daily 12-hour work schedule that would leave even

46

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

Congressional Aide William Clyburn tackles Capitol Hill's 'grunt work' with confidence and a sense of humor.

The Fridge gasping for breath.

For Clyburn, who lives in a "bachelor pad" near Capitol Hill and loves the "Washington social whirl," the concept of public service began at Georgia Tech, during his days as an Omega Psi Phi fraternity Big Brother volunteer in the innercity Techwood neighborhood.

"Many of the kids in Techwood didn't have the same things we had growing up," Clyburn recalls. "I did my best to inspire them. I told them they could accomplish their dreams—and you should have seen their faces light up."

Armed with both his Georgia Tech degree and a law degree from the University of South Carolina, Clyburn has spent the past three years zipping around Capitol Hill, where he is charged with keeping his senator up to speed on all matters affecting commerce.

Whether he's doing legal research on a new bill designed to tighten regulations in the trucking industry (a recent assignment), sitting down with Robb to outline

the possible implications of a new tariff measure, or meeting with a peeved lobbyist, Clyburn walks the taut political highwire that is life on Capitol Hill for a legislative assistant.

Like the hundreds of Congressional aides who do most of the daily "grunt work" on The Hill, the gregarious Clyburn must "keep a hundred different things going at once."

Clyburn doesn't feel intimidated, and he doesn't worry about disagreeing with his boss.

"Senator Robb did not hire me as a 'yes man,'" Clyburn says. "I just tell it like it is, and let the chips fall where they may. After all, he's the elected official who must make the decisions. My job is to give him the facts, period."

Wearing a swirly-patterned tie and glittering silver suspenders, Clyburn exudes self-confidence.

But should he ever feel overwhelmed, he has some resources on which to draw: "I am the son of Bill and Beverly Clyburn [two highly regarded teachers in Aiken]. And No. 2,1 did graduate from Georgia Tech. And No. 3,1 say my prayers every night, and I ask for help."

He breaks into laughter again. It is easy to see that Clyburn loves his job.

"It's very meaningful work. I'm doing my best each day to help Senator Robb represent the people of Virginia and the people of the United States to the very best of his ability. We've got enormous problems in this country, and this is the best way I can find to help." GT Tom Nugent is a Washington-based freelance writer.

Monika Nikore photo

Environmentalist Sally Bethea is surrounded by garbage on the Chattahoochee River.

Riverkeeper Sally Bethea is fighting to save one of the country's most endangered rivers

By Karen B. Hill

S

ally Bethea and her small group of environmentalists are taking on—and starting to beat—developers, industrialists and bureaucrats who have abused the Chattahoochee River for decades.

Bethea, M CP '80, is head of the two-year-old Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an organization devoted to preserving the river from its headwaters near Helen, Ga., to West Point Dam in west Georgia.

"I want it so clean that people don't have to call us and ask if it's clean enough to raft in, clean enough so that people can catch fish and not worry about eating contaminants, clean enough to swim in," Bethea says. "I have to think those are achievable goals."

The Chattahoochee, which meanders from north Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico, provides 70 percent of metro Atlanta's drinking water and has fueled its economic growth. In return, developers muck it up with soil runoff that chokes aquatic life; cities dump sewage and trash in it, and industries add chemical wastes. This spring, the Chattahoochee was named one of the 10 most endangered rivers in the United States by American Rivers, a Washington-based envi-

ronmental group.

Bethea is fighting back on several fronts. Riverkeeper has sued the city of Atlanta, accusing it of violating the Clean Water Act. The group keeps an eye on 56 industries with state permits to discharge wastes into the river. It also monitors officials and developers.

And in a move that made headlines, Riverkeeper helped broker an agreement in which a housing developer turned over 27 riverfront acres to the National Park Service in exchange for 24 acres of national parkland. No house will be built within 350 feet of the water.

"Her approach of working on all of the threats to the river is important, " says Sam Collier, field representative for the Sierra Club in Atlanta. "It gives us a sense of place, an overall idea of the problems."

"Her perseverance and devotion are a personal inspiration," says Tom Beisswenger, litigation director for the nonprofit Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest, which in August persuaded a federal judge to order the EPA to set pollution limits for hundreds of Georgia rivers and streams.

The Turner Foundation, established by media mogul Ted Turner, launched Riverkeeper in 1994 with a $50,000 grant.

Bethea, who had worked for the EPA and the Georgia Conservancy, was hired then as Riverkeeper's only employee. Today, the group includes a staff attorney, four parttime workers, dozens of volunteers and 1,200 members. Its annual budget of $160,000 comes from members, benefit events, private foundations and federal grants.

"I have somehow meshed an occupation with a passion, and that infuses a lot more energy into my work," Bethea says. "It also means I never stop working."

Bethea traces her environmental roots to her childhood in north Atlanta. "I grew up going to sleep with the sounds of a creek and the woods behind my house," Bethea says. "In the 1970s, I was exposed to the Sierra Club and intuitively felt that what they were doing with the natural world was right."

In 1978, Bethea, who had earned a degree in sociology from the University of North Carolina, won a Regents' Opportunity Scholarship for graduate school at Georgia Tech. Her internship: working with the just-formed Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, which has preserved 4,100 acres from Cumming to Atlanta for outdoor enthusiasts.

"All along, I intended to focus on environmental and land-use issues. When I went to grad school, I got the technical ammunition to support my personal beliefs," she says.

"At the time, when in my 20s and 30s, I wasn't sure where I was going; it seemed a jerky sort of path. But looking back now, it seems like a logical sequence of education, personal interest and relationships with individuals who were very helpful." GT Karen B. Hill is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.

Fall 1996 • GEORGIA TECH

47

OwnAQassic A V25 scale replica of the official Ramblin' Wreck

After an overwhelming response, the Georgia Tech Alumni Association is offering a second edition of the Ramblin' Wreck. The perfectly reproduced model is six inches long and features: • Die cast in high quality metal • Painted to match the Official Ramblin' Wreck • Rumble seat opens to reveal a lockable coin bank • Wheels turn • Official "GT" logo on the doors • Finely detailed interior

• Great as a Gift!

Really celebrate birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, retirements, or that special event with the one you love (or a longtime Bulldog "friend")

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Phone Orders: Call Toll Free 1 800 GT ALUMS

Please send me replica(s) of the Ramblin' Wreck § $29.95 Shipping ($4.50 per Wreck) GA residents add 6% tax ($1.80 per Wreck) TOTAL

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SEND MAIL ORDERS TO: Official Ramblin Wreck Georgia Tech Alumni Association Alumni House Atlanta, GA 30332-0175

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Bright Idea Science Dean Gary Schuster is shedding light on the future of computer memory

f

By Hoyt Coffee

I

Imagine being able to store the entire Library of Congress on your personal computer. Then imagine being able to erase it with a flash of light and replace it with all the software available at unimaginably high speed.

Long a staple of science fiction, such near-limitless memory is moving closer to the realm of science fact, thanks to the work of Georgia Tech researchers.

The key is a reversible, light-activated optical switch utilizing liquid crystal, which could become the basis of a threedimensional, "holographic" memory cube for computers or other so-farunforeseen applications, says Dr. Gary Schuster, dean of sciences and a chemistry professor at Tech, who leads the research team.

"The idea is that you would write to the liquid crystal with circularly

50

GEORGIA TECH â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 1996

polarized light, read it with linearly polarized light and erase it with unpolarized light," says Schuster, who started working on the National Science Foundation-funded project about six years ago while consulting for a company that needed a "spatial light modulator."

"No such thing of the kind they needed existed.

So that got me thinking about what sorts of materials would be required to solve their problem. That was the trigger for it."

Specializing in photochemistry, Schuster considered ways photochemical reactions might be used in information technology.

"In any informationtransfer scheme there has to be an amplifier," he says.

For example, old-fashioned vacuum tubes and modern microprocessors use very small amounts of electricity to manipulate much larger amounts, but Schuster wanted to use light as the stimulus, rather than electricity.

"Then it occurred to me that liquid crystals and their phase behavior might serve as a way of amplify-

ing photochemical changes.

So we began looking at that."

Let There Be Light

T

he optical switch succeeds by utilizing "chiral molecules," bits of matter that exist in two forms, mirror images of each other. Because those molecules have a particular "right-" or "left-handedness" to them, they react differently to light that is polarized circularly, itself left- or right-handed.

Schuster uses an analogy to human hands, three-dimensional objects that are mirror images of each other, to explain the principle.

"Think of trying to shake hands with somebody," he says. "If you shake hands right hand to right hand, it works just fine. If you shake hands left hand to left hand, it works just fine. But if you try to shake hands right hand to left hand, it doesn't work at all.

"It's the same relationship between the light and the molecules. Righthanded, circularly polarized light interacts in some Science Dean Dr. Gary Schuster and graduate student Kikue Burnham examine a test specimen in the chemistry lab.

/

L same time withI out causing a I short-circuit, so many bits of information could be written to a three-dimensional memory at once.

J f I molecules dissolved in liquid crystal and exposed to circularly polarized light, the result may be the secret to extreme high-capacity holographic memory.

way with right-handed molecules, but interacts a different way with lefthanded molecules. So you take advantage of that change." When the chiral molecules are dissolved in liquid crystal and exposed to modest amounts of polarized-light energy, they cause a phase change in the liquid crystal, like the phase change that takes place when water turns to ice.

"Liquid crystals, which are both liquids and crystals, have different kinds of order, undergo phase transitions to different liquid phases," Schuster says.

That is how such things as liquid-crystal computer screens display images, although that type of phase change is induced with electricity. The advantage of using light to induce the change is that multiple beams can be used at the

3-D Memory

I

n current two-dimensional memory media, such as magnetic tape or floppy disks, only one bit of information can be written at a time as tiny metallic particles are aligned along magnetic north or south to create the on-off configuration used in digital language.

"What we do with the light is we build up an excess of either the righthanded or left-handed molecules," Schuster says.

"We start with a 50-50 mixture, and then when we have an excess of one kind of molecule or the other that induces the phase transition in the liquid crystal. The phase transition is then sensed optically."

Linearly polarized light is used to "read" the molecules because it can distinguish between left- and right-handed molecules.

Light that is not polarized returns the chiral molecules to their original state, making the potential "memory

Gary Meek Photo

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

51

A 3-D memory medium could hold a trillion bits of information in a space now storing only 100 million bits.

cube" erasable. Much work remains, however, before the memory cube becomes reality. For example, Schuster says he isn't sure yet just how the switches will be useful for an optical memory system.

"There are a lot of people who have thought about ways of using light for memory applications," he says. "I think the reality is that it is only going to be useful if you can do it in three dimensions. Furthermore, that would be useful only if you don't have to write information a bit at a time, which means writing it holographically.

"If you could write three-dimensional holograms optically, then you would really have something worthwhile."

While traditional memory media can hold about 100 million bits of information per square centimeter, a three-dimensional medium could hold a trillion bits in the same space.

To create a three-dimensional system, the liquid crystal and dissolved "trigger" molecules would need to be dispersed in a layered 52

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

polymeric material.

Droplets of the liquid crystal— estimated at less than a micron in size—could be addressed individually or in groups to store digital information.

But don't look for such a system anytime soon.

"Our grandchildren might see the first computers based on this system," Schuster says.

Besides, today's discoveries may be used in ways unimaginable from a '90s perspective.

"It's impossible to foresee the uses," Schuster says. "If you were looking at impurities in silicon 30 years ago, could you have foreseen the personal computer?"

Meanwhile, Schuster and his group will continue their experiments. And they'll leave the future to other scientists.

"We're not so much interested in the ultimate application of it as we are that we've discovered a new material and a new way of controlling the material. We'll continue to investigate the properties of these things to find out what's unique about them and what can be done with them. And then some very smart people will learn what we've done, and they'll be able to say, 'Hey, I can use that to do this.'

That's the way it works."GT

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In 1997, all Georgia license plates will be reissued. State of Georgia registered vehicle owners who wish to renew or apply for a Georgia Tech Commemorative License Plate must do so by October 31,1996.

• Initial one-time $25 Commemorative tag manufacturing fee • An annual $25 renewal fee, and vehicle license plate fee • Contact your local Motor Vehicle Division for an application "Request for the Manufacture of a College or University Commemorative License Plate."

You may also contact the Georgia Tech Alumni Association for an application or questions at: 404-894-2391,1-800-GT ALUMS, or E-mail: kmiller@ea.gtf.gatech.edu.

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RESEARCH

Designer Drugs New DNA imaging helps chemists create more effective drugs

By Amanda Crowell

G

eorgia Tech researchers have devised a new method for determining the effects of certain drugs on DNA strands in what could be an important breakthrough for medical technology.

Using a scanning-force microscope, two chemistry graduate students and their research advisors have developed a new way to examine and quickly map how nucleic acid ligands, in some cases anti-cancer drugs, bind to and alter DNA at the molecular level.

This new method works by imaging individual DNA molecules.

It's faster than traditional methods, and the results are direct and relatively simple to interpret.

"Our technique directly visualizes individual DNA molecules, while traditional techniques are indirect and inferential, sometimes giving inexplicable results," says project co-advisor Dr. Loren Williams, an associate professor in Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

"Now when a medicinal chemist synthesizes a potential drug, we can quickly tell them if it binds to DNA, how tightly it binds, and the mode by which it binds," he adds.

One of the major advantages of the new technique is it shows researchers how drugs affect single DNA molecules, says Dr. Lawrence Bottomley, a Tech chemistry professor who specializes in scanning-force microscopy.

"Other techniques require us to examine several billion molecules at a time and then make inferences about the behavior of individual molecules," he said.

Graduate student Joseph E.

56

GEORGIA TECH â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 1996

Coury, working under Bottomley's direction, is responsible for much of the development of the new assay. Lori McFail-Isom, a graduate student of Williams', prepared highly purified drug-DNA samples for the project and currently is obtaining images of new DNA complexes.

Williams and Bottomley presented this work during the 211th American Chemical Society national meeting in New Orleans in late March, and they have submitted it for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Jonathan B. Chaires of the University of Mississippi Medical Center's Department of Biochemistry called the work "a significant and important advance in the area of drug-DNA interactions."

"One can imagine that the method could be of wide use in the pharmacology industry as an

important preclinical screen of new DNA binding agents," says Chaires, who has studied DNA-drug interaction for nearly 20 years. "Since some of the most effective agents in use in cancer chemotherapy are DNA intercalators, this fundamental research could have important practical use."

Both Williams and Bottomley anticipate widespread acceptance and use of this assay once the school's findings are disseminated.

"This is just the beginning," Bottomley says. "Although scanning-force microscopes are already available in numerous academic and industrial labs across the country, they have not been widely used in pharmacological applications.

Now these microscopes can play a vital role in the design of new anticancer and anti-viral drugs, by providing important information on how drugs bind to genes."

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Shhtrictly Shhpeaking Slurred speech may he used to test how much someone's been drinking

K

athleen E. Cummings, in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is working with colleagues from Indiana University to digitally quantify slurred speech, which could lead to a simple, noninvasive way to test a person's sobriety.

"This is basically an effect of fine motor control," says Cummings, who published her thesis in 1992 on how speech changes when produced under emotional stress or with linguistic effects, such as talking quickly or slowly, loudly or softly.

Preliminary results show that intoxicated speech is marked by jumpy changes in pitch and energy production, and unsteady opening and closing of the vocal cords.

Cummings is working with Dr. David B. Pisoni and Dr. Steven B. Chin of Indiana University as part of their ongoing study of ways to measure how alcohol consumption affects speech. The current project is sponsored by the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation.

For her thesis work Cummings used digitized speech collected from several people speaking in 11 of the most common non-normal styles of speech. She then spent several years analyzing the signals produced by the sounds and discovered distinct differences between normal speech and that produced under emotional stress, with

SCMORB-AWH... an accuracy rate of discriminate between more than 90 percent. sober and intoxicated Now she is studying speech. Acoustic analysis samples of sober and also has shown that intoxicated speech from intoxicated speech is four different people slower, features longer gathered at Indiana sentences and is marked University. They inby mispronunciations, clude different types of such as slurred sounds speech, such as monoand transposed letters syllabic words, tongue and words. twisters, isolated senIn the current study tences and passages of Cummings is finding that connected sentences. alcohol has a major effect on Samples were taken the excitation parameters that when participants were reflect the steadiness with sober, moderately intoxiwhich a person produces cated (0.05 percent blood-alcohol speech. "If I can come up with a level) and highly intoxicated (0.10 small set of parameters that differpercent blood-alcohol level or entiate sober and intoxicated higher, considered legally drunk in speech, which I think I can do, it's most states). actually not a hard task," she says.

"There are some really simple disPast perceptual research on this tance measures that involve very database has shown that a person few calculations." listening to the samples can reliably

Fish-eye View Marine ecosystem makes splash teaching chemistry on Internet

A

n innovative Georgia Tech program that uses an ecosystem in a 350-gallon saltwater aquarium to help teach chemistry is making a splash over the Internet.

In the class taught by Dr. Kenneth D. Hughes, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, students conduct experiments on the marine ecosystem that houses a variety of life, including fish, soft coral, sea anemones and coralline algae. During an academic quarter, students draw water samples to examine

factors such as dissolved oxygen, pH levels, salinity and metal ions.

In June, the program spilled beyond the boundaries of the aquarium and Georgia Tech onto the Internet and throughout the state of Georgia.

The idea is to give other Georgia colleges and universities, as well as kindergarten through 12th grades, a chance to explore the ecosystem without the expense of setting up their own. Many state schools already have the necessary wiring, so participants need only a computer and an Internet connection.

Students can access electronic probes and sensors, allowing them to perform real-time experiments like those conducted in Hughes'

Fall 1996 â&#x20AC;˘ GEORGIA TECH

57

An***!

classes. They also can download all data needed to write lab reports. An underwater camera gives a "fish-eye" view of life in the tank, and participants can take turns controlling where test probes are set. The resulting data is available to everyone at any time.

"We've talked at length with high school teachers and middle school teachers about the kinds of things they would like," Hughes says. "Lab periods differ, topics differ, the times of year they get to those topics differ ... so we think

this will be a real beneficial system for them to interact with."

In the Georgia Tech classes, students conduct a variety of tests, then use the results to keep the aquarium residents healthy. In the process, they learn fundamental quantitative chemical analysis, as well as the role of chemistry in the environment.

The idea to take Hughes' classroom project statewide came about at a technology workshop for teachers sponsored by the University System of Georgia's Board of Regents during the summer of

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1995. Since then, Hughes has worked with John Pratte, a natural sciences professor at Clayton State College in Morrow, Ga., to design and plan the new program.

With partial funding in place, the long-distance learning program has gone online. Organizers also will put a 1.2-cubic-meter terrarium on the Internet in 1997.

"This is, I think, the next level of remote or distance learning, where students are actually exploring and investigating a site and downloading real chemical data," Hughes says. "It provides a multidisciplinary learning experience that will tie all aspects of a science major's degree together."

Amanda Crowell is a writer in the Research Communications Office of the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

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PROFILE

Bringing History to Life History professor Ron Bayor helps turn engineers into better citizens

By Michael Terrazas

T

eaching history, or any other branch of liberal arts, has to present a unique challenge at a school like Georgia Tech. Most of the students have a decidedly more scientific bent to them, looking for clear causes, definite solutions, airtight equations.

Dr. Ronald H. Bayor takes all this in stride. A professor in the School of History, Technology and Society, Bayor knows his job is to take a subject, previously a dull morass of names and dates to some students, and breathe life into it.

And for the past 23 years, that is exactly what he has done.

"A number of students—not all of them, some are real buffs—had a negative experience with history in high school," says Bayor, who in 1983 won Tech's Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. "The thing to do is make them realize history is a living subject and not

something about a bunch of dead people, that it informs us about our world today. I try to give them a sense of problems that have popped up in various points in our history and are still issues now."

Many students, Bayor explains, walk into his classroom with heads spinning from a day of numbers and formulas from other classes.

"They're glad to get into a classroom where people are talked about, where people issues are discussed, where human relations are discussed.

"So I try to bring history into the present, and I've always had a lot of students who have taken my upper-level courses. They go beyond the freshman survey history.

That shows interest. The main thing about Georgia Tech students is they're bright and willing to work, and that's half the battle of getting them interested."

A native New Yorker, Bayor taught at St. John's University in

The Bayor File Born: March 14, 1944 in New York.

Education: BA in history from City College of New York, 1965; MA from Syracuse University, 1966; Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania, 1970.

Personal: wife, Leslie, Atlanta correspondent for Advertising Age and Life magazines; two daughters; Robin, 24, political marketing consultant in Washington; and Jill, 27, writer in New York.

Achievements: University of Pennsylvania Teaching Fellowship, 1967-69; Newberry Summer Institute Fellowship, 1975; Neighbors in Conflict chosen by Choice magazine as outstanding academic book for 1978; Georgia Tech Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, 1983; American Historical Association Albert J. Beveridge Grant, 1986; National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship, 1992-93; Distinguished Service Award, Immigration History Society, 1992.

Leisure Interests: Collecting political campaign buttons—Bayor's collection goes back to 1884 James G. Blaine/Grover Cleveland pins.

Also reading, working out on an exercise bike.

62

GEORGIA TECH • Fall 1996

New York for four years and spent summers at both New York University and the City University of New York before heading South.

Since coming to Tech with his wife and two young daughters in 1973, Bayor has watched both the city of Atlanta and the Institute change dramatically. "I've seen Atlanta grow so much over the past 23 years; I'm surprised at how much it has boomed," he admits. "I was only in the first wave of northerners coming down, because tremendous numbers of them have come down since then."

Urban Heart

T

hese issues, the problems and dynamics of the Big City, are the heart of Bayor's work. His main course is on urban history, dealing with a host of issues brought to bear in America's cities since colonial times. It is impossible, he notes, to talk about the American city without discussing the impact of technology—the automobile, for example. But Bayor has focused, both in his courses and in his research, on the human concerns.

In May, Bayor published Race & the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta, the sixth book he has either authored or edited. In it he examines, from Reconstruction through the 1980s, the impact of black/ white issues on public policy, and some of the revelations may come as a surprise.

"That research really showed me a lot of things about Atlanta," he says. "Race was very important.

Atlanta was not really the 'City Too Busy to Hate.' In some ways it was better than other cities in avoiding a lot of violence, but many things were left undone here; the process

r H U r I L.KL Gary Meek Photo

RON BAYOR: "Many students are glad to get into a classroom where people issues are discussed. I try to bring history into the present.

of desegregating the city was a very slow, sometimes glacially slow process."

One way in which Atlanta has differed historically from Bayor's native New York is that, for the most part, racial conflict is all Atlanta's had to deal with; New York has always been a melting pot—sometimes a steaming pressure cooker—of a wide range of races, religions and ethnicities. This has started to change in Atlanta and other southern cities as Asian and Hispanic immigrants, for example, have established themselves.

"I think you're going to see Atlanta and other cities becoming more like Miami, more like New York, with multiple ethnic groups working out a way of getting along, working together," Bayor says. But he adds, "There's probably more of a willingness for groups to sit down and talk in Atlanta. The city had a

tradition of sitting down and discussing issues."

Bayor himself established a forum for discussion, the Journal of American Ethnic History, which he founded in 1981 and remains editor of today. With a circulation of 1,000 in approximately 25 countries worldwide, it is the preeminent journal in its field. "That's something Tech's always been very supportive of, in terms of my editorship of that."

And like Atlanta, Georgia Tech has undergone its share of metamorphoses over the years, not the least of which have been within Bayor's own department. Once basically a "service department," HTS can now boast its own major and even its own doctoral program in history of technology.

"It's been nice getting graduate students here," Bayor says. "It's good to have people who are par-

ticularly interested in what we do at HTS. That's been an important plus for this department. It helps us recruit other [faculty] who want to come to a place where there's a doctoral program."

In fact, the Institute as a whole has become much more rounded in the 23 years Bayor has been here.

"Tech has broadened itself. The very fact that a student can come here and do something in addition to engineering, management, architecture or science, and that Tech can be known for a broad array of studies, is a real plus."

Bayor tries to inspire his students to go beyond their applied fields, an attitude they come to value later in life. "I've had students come back years later and say they've been very appreciative of what they learned; they realized years later they're more than engineers—they're also citizens." err

Fall 1996 • GEORGIA TECH

63

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Georgia Tech Grandfather Clock

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e take great pride in offering the Georgia Tech Grandfather Clock. This beautifully designed commemorative clock symbolizes the image of excellence, tradition, and history we have established at Georgia

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Satisfaction is guaranteed or you may return your clock within fifteen days for exchange or refund. Whether selected for your personal use or as an expressive, distinctive gift, the Georgia Tech Grandfather Clock is certain to become an heirloom, cherished for generations.

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Purchaser's Name: Address: City, State, Zip: Credit Card purchasers may call toll free 1-800-346-2884.

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