Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 83, No. 02 2006

WIZARD OF WATT CELTIC JOURNAL

"My gifts enable me to give back to Tech now while providing for my family's future."

William R. Collins Jr., ME 1957, MSIM 1963 Alpharetta, Georgia pictured

with:

Karen Collins Thurman, IM 198.

Claire Thurman, Class of 2010

• Atlanta native, graduated from Bass High School.

• Member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at Georgia Tech.

• Former President and CEO of Pinkerton and Laws; worked 32 year: for the company.

• Founder and CEO of Collins and Arnold Construction Co. • Member of the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees and Campaign Georgia Tech Steering Committee.

• Served as a member of the Alexande Tharpe Fund Board.

• Guest lecturer on entrepreneurship f< the College of Management.

• Married to Jacqueline Mobley on December 20, 1958.

• Family members attending Georgia Tech: daughter Karen C. Thurman, l/v 1982; son-in-law Mark K. Thurman, ME 1983; son Matthew W. Collins, MGT 1990; and granddaughter Clair Thurman, entered in fall 2006 with the Class of 2010.

Gifts to Georgia Tech • Charitable lead trust to support Building a Competitive Advantage and the College of Management Special Needs Fund.

• Gift of a life insurance policy to support the Alexander-Tharpe Fund and the Georgia Tech Foundation Special Needs Fund.

• A-T Platinum Life Member; donor to A-T for 28 consecutive years.

• Donor to Roll Call for 53 consecutive years.

Notable Quotation: "When I first started thinking about my estate plan, it made sense to include Georgia Tech. Later, when I wanted to give more, I funded a charitable lead trust with real estate, allowing me to give back to Tech now while providing for my family's future."

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William R. Collins Jr., ME 1957, MSIM 1963, is one of 884 members of Georg Tech's Founders' Council, the honorary society of alumni and friends who have made non-contingent bequests or lifeincome gifts of at least $25,000 for the support of Georgia Tech.

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For more information on helping students at Georgia Tech through a bequest or life-income gift, please contact: Office of Development • Planned Giving • Atlanta GA 30332-0220 • (404) 894-4678 • founderscouncil@dev.gatech.edu

XM Satellite Radio. With over 100 channels, and commercial-free music at every seat, there's something for everyone.

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GeorgiaTe Alumni Magazine ™

w Volume 83, Number 2

Wizard of Watts Making graduate school fun and exciting has been one of the most important aspects of his job, says James D. Meindl, winner of the 2006 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor. Meindl started out in technology half a century ago, when semiconductors were little more than laboratory curiosities.

Bella Umbria

Cheap Oil Is History

Through the Lands of the Celts

Cover Story: Georgia Tech is involved in a spectrum of research related to the conservation of energy — all which carry the potential and goal of broadening energy sources and lessening the nation's reliance on petroleum, especially in the transportation sector. The volatility of the gas pump — daily and sometimes hourly — has many researchers looking for answers.

Georgia Tech President G. Wayne Clough led a group of alumni through the lands of the Celts — a modern-day journey into a history that began in 5000 B.C. He and his wife, Anne, share a Celtic heritage and the seabased adventure took them to the land of their ancestors.

Alumna Susan Evans wanted to get a "rustic" Italian villa —and she did. She bought Fondo de Teglie — a dilapidated farmhouse, stable and two outbuildings nestled into a hillside.

She brought to the restoration project a lot of loving care - and a business plan.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006 i i

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a//2006PREVIEW Viewpoint

InQuotes

Initiating Momentum

Comments in the media from the Tech community

Interview

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Feedback Readers write

Dean Richard DeMillo describes the "new face of computing" at Georgia Tech

InFocus DramaTech Revival Join the Crowd Jackets Fly By 100-year Mark

Tech Notes • Schuster New Provost • All Engineering in Top 10 • Professor Dickerson Endows Chair • Movie Pirates Will Encounter Curse of Technology • Beautiful to Behold • Surviving Tech • Movie Backdrop • IBM Buys ISS • Good Time Had By All

You've come a long way, Bun

Tech's mascotYellow Jacket — first drawn in a 1906 cartoon, above — has passed the centennial mark.

Buzz, his more modern manifest- Pacesetter \ Hon, is only in his late 20s. Sam Williams: fc\ Bags 20 Dancing With Wood

Pacesetter Tom DeLoach: Track Teams

Page 58 Geo

Alumni Almanac It was a time for tall tales when players in the most lopsided football game in history reunited to remember Cumberland's 222-0 loss to Georgia Tech

Faculty Profile Elizabeth Dowling: Green Architecture

Photo Finish 9/11 Remembered

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Echelon, Home of the Georgia Tech Club, will be a community of elegant homes in an atmosphere of comfortable camaraderie and the exclusive benefits of a private club. Nestled on 610 acres of wooded, rolling bills and lakes, you might feel like you're living at a secluded, private estate. The Georgia 400 area, with its technology corridor, exemplary shopping, restaurants, services, and quick access to Atlanta, is just minutes away. Echelon residents will enjoy living in a low density community of only 230 homesites at least one acre in size.

The Georgia Tech Club is destined to become one of the finest private clubs in the state of Georgia. It will feature a championship Rees Jones golf course, an approx. 25,000 sq. ft. clubhouse, fitness and swim center, Stan Smith designed tennis facility and state-of-the art (iolf Learning Center, home of the (leorgia lech NCAA men's golf team. The golf course is currently under construction and will open the Spring of 2006 ATLANTA'S HIGH

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Left on Birmingham Road and right on Birmingham Highway. Travel 1.6 miles to Welcome Center on right.

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Georgia Tech Alumni A s s o c i a t i o n Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80, Publisher John C. Dunn, Editor Kimberly Link-Wills, Managing Editor Neil B. McGahee, Senior Editor Leslie Overman, Editorial Assistant Gary Goettling, Contributing Editor Everett Hullum, Design

Alumni Association Executive Committee Janice N. Wittschiebe, Arch 78, M Arch 80 Chair J. William Goodhew III, IM 61 Past Chair C. Meade Sutterfield, EE 72 Chair-elect/Finance William J. Todd, IM 71 Vice Chair for Roll Call C. Dean Alford, EE 76 Joseph W. Evans, IM 71 Marion B. Glover, IM 65 Members At Earge Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80 President

Advertising Maris Ozug (404) 894-0766 • E-mail: maris.ozug@alumni.gatech.edu

Initiating Momentum The academic year is in full swing now and the great schedule of fall events is well under way. I want to encourage you to come back for Homecoming 2006. It begins on Thursday, Oct. 26. Go to the Alumni Association's Web site at www.gtalumni.org to register. Here's why.

The lineup of alumni seminars is extraordinary. Want to learn more about America's energy crisis and the alternatives? Climate change and society? Georgia Tech and showbiz? Identity theft and what you can do to protect yourself? The "guts" of the Georgia Aquarium? Innovation?

Promising new approaches in cancer diagnostics and treatment? The president's message about where Tech is headed in its quest to define the technological university of the 21st century?

Homecoming today is not simply about the big game anymore. It's about showcasing some of the reasons that Georgia Tech continues to grow and prosper in the face of daunting economic challenges. When you come to the seminars you'll learn more about Tech than you ever knew before. It will give you great pride to know that your institution isn't sitting still — it's moving fast on many fronts to help society, to improve the economy and, not least of all, educate the new leaders of this technological world.

The initiatives and focus of Georgia Tech are building momentum.

If you look around the country there are a handful of universities that have real momentum. Tech is among that select group. The economic opportunities of the future are emerging at the crossroads of science, engineering, computing, business, architecture and the humanities.

These crossroads are being explored by Georgia Tech, its faculty, staff and students. You can learn firsthand about some of these areas during Homecoming 200oT Come on back.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine (ISSN: 1061-9747) is published quarterly (Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring) for contributors to the annual Roll Call of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 190 North Ave. NW, Atlanta, GA 30313.

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. © 2006 Georgia Tech Alumni Association Main Number (404) 894-2391.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, 190 North Ave. NW, Atlanta, GA 30313.

Editorial phone (404) 894-0750/0760; Fax (404) 385-4637; E-mail: editor@alumni.gatech.edu; gtalumni.org Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

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You'll always be a part of the family. Come home for

HOMECOMING WEEKEND October 26-28

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER ONLINE, PLEASE VISIT

GTALUMNI.ORG/HOMECOMING OR CALL 800-GTALUMS TO REQUEST A BROCHURE

Presented by

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Georgia Tech A l u m n i

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Association The Georgia Tech Alumni Association invites you to return to campus for an event-filled weekend to reminisce, reconnect and help cheer the Yellow Jackets to victory. Contact your friends and classmates and make plans to be a part of Homecoming 2006!

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Enter a world that challenges human potential, where anything is possible. Witness a group of renowned acrobats and contortionists defy the limits of reality. Homecoming's highly anticipated Friday night celebration includes entertainment for all ages and a spectacular fireworks show over the stadium.

If the global warming

>>FEEDBACK

model proves right, we are apt to lose the means Global Warming Threat Chilling In his letter, "Global Warming Gets Cold Shoulder," David Martin uses faulty logic to reach fallacious conclusions with potentially fatal consequences.

Over the past several decades, "quasi-experimental design" and "impact assessment" have advanced our ability to deal with complex challenges such as global warming.

I too was trained as a chemical engineer and have worked in a refinery where process control is essential. But that situation generalizes poorly to global climate systems. A far better approach builds upon the insightful work of Don Campbell and others on how to arrive at sound conclusions in situations where full experimental controls are unavailable. This framework opportunistically uses comparisons to draw carefully weighed conclusions.

• Construct validity — that the theoretical variables are adequately specified.

• Conclusion validity — that the analytical design is sufficiently powerful to detect effects, should they exist.

• Internal validity — the extent to which detected effects are due to the suggested cause.

• External validity — the extent to which observed effects can be generalized to the context of interest.

In much physical science and engineering, randomized experiments or strong human control rule out many alternative causal explanations.

With global warming, we don't have the luxury of worldscale, controlled experimentation. But we can compile evidence from natural and certain managed comparisons to

8

increase our confidence in particular hypotheses over rival explanations. For instance, time series patterns can be interpreted with respect to precedence and strength of association (e.g., more emissions followed by atmospheric composition changes). Martin claims that localized changes contra-indicate global warming. Not so — such differences have been examined to show that human actions are altering atmospheric makeup regionally.

How do these notions come to bear on global warming?

Martin helpfully distinguishes a putative causal chain, which I modify somewhat: • A-B: (A) Human actions (e.g., burning fossil fuels) increase (B) greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

• B-C: Increased greenhouse gases (B) lead to (C) global warming.

• C-D: Global warming (C) could lead to (D) disastrous consequences.

Imagine you're a global warming detective. How strong is the evidence for each of the causal links in the chain; A-B, B-C and C-D? Our planet is singular, but we can find informative "natural experiment" comparisons.

Localized patterns of varying pollution and atmospheric conditions speak to A. As I understand, the evidence is incontrovertible that identified human actions do emit precursors and certain greenhouse gases.

Hemispheric differences and other comparisons show that these are on a scale that could matter. The sharply increasing trend in fossil fuel combustion over the past 150 years correlates with increasing atmospheric C0 2 etc. (evidence for rela-

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

tionship A-B). What else offers as good an explanation for the observed increases in greenhouse gas concentration over this period?

Moving to the B-C link, temperature trends over the past decades show dramatic increase. Human actions over the past 150 years have increased greenhouse gases and those contribute strongly to the observed increasing temperature (relationship B-C). "An Inconvenient Truth" finds more than 900 peer-reviewed research articles supporting such linkage, and none refuting it.

On to link C-D — could global warming have beneficial consequences? This calls for impact assessment. The International Association for Impact Assessment was founded at Georgia Tech in 1981.

Estimating future consequences is inherently uncertain — we estimate risks and perform a series of "what if?" analyses. In the case of global warming, those analyses do indicate prospects of localized benefits of a sort, but such models also suggest horrendous impacts that likely overwhelm the beneficial ones.

I think the constructs are clear; the available evidence strongly indicative; the logic clear (internal validity) and unbiased; and the data pertinent. I find each link to be compelling (strongly supported, but not absolutely certain). But even if one or more links were only plausible, I judge that the risk of severe impacts is strong and unacceptable (possible catastrophic disruption of civilization), outweighing possible modest benefits.

What should we do?

Even if the global warming case is right, can we still

to sustain civilized life in many highly populated coastal regions. Along the way to that frightening future, even the incidental costs may be nasty — regional droughts, lowered food production and increased frequency of Katrinamagnitude storms.

Martin's "enjoy the warm weather" chills me. change our actions (A) to diminish atmospheric and resultant climate changes (B, C) and their potentially negative consequences (D)? The evidence implies that the relationships AB and B-C involve tremendous inertia. Simulation results warn that relationship A-B is very sluggish and highly nonlinear.

So, hopefully, our actions still can make a difference. But we cannot afford to wait to see if the global warming predictions prove true and then hope to do anything about them.

If the global warming model proves right, impact assessment exercises estimate we are apt to lose the means to sustain civilized life in many highly populated coastal regions. Along the way to that frightening future, even the incidental costs may be nasty — regional droughts, lowered food production and increased frequency of Katrina-magnitude storms.

Martin's "enjoy the warm weather" chills me.

The Precautionary Principle guides much of the world's environmental policies. This holds that if the consequences of an action (or nonaction) are poten-

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tially severe or irreversible, the absence of full scientific certainty should not be used to prevent avoidance of harm, The global climate system is inherently complex and its consequences violent, so our decisions need to be so guided.

Alan L. Porter Co-director Technology Policy and Assessment Center

Don't Debate, Act I read with considerable interest the feedback letter in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE (Summer 2006) that was sent in by David A. Martin, ChE 79. I think that Mr. Martin's credentials in this field should have been indicated.

While I am not an environmental scientist, I am reasonably well read concerning the subject of global warming. I think the scientific community has made a compelling case for global warming. Even if not caused by current human actions, the weather is getting warmer worldwide. Rather than debating what is causing the problem, we should be planning now for the long-range effects on coastal cities from rising water levels.

I am concerned that the fullpage coverage given to this letter by the ALUMNI MAGAZINE

almost appears to be an What, Me Worry? endorsement of Mr. Martin's Well, I'm convinced. I must position on the matter by admit that I was starting to get Georgia Tech. I would like to worried about global warming. I have seen both sides of this kept reading in my American important issue presented in Physical Society newsletter that some fair manner. Hopefully, there was no real debate Tech will schedule a seminar on among scientists about the fact this subject in the near future. of global warming, but I wasn't so sure. Now I can "relax and John P. Kidd, IM 62 lighten up" because David Alpharetta, Ga. Martin has told me that global Dave Martin is a statistical warming doesn't exist; or if it process control engineer in Knoxville, Tenn. Professor Peter does, it's a small effect; or if it's a large effect, humans can't Webster will examine "tipping possibly be responsible. points" in a "Climate and Society" seminar during Now I believe that global Homecoming Oct. 27 at the warming doesn't exist because Global Learning Center.

Mr. Martin says so, and of course, since Mr. Martin is a Tech alumnus in chemical engineering, he must be right. He Manufactured Panic even has a reference to a novelHooray for David A. Martin for ist to back up his claims. And to logically explaining the various think I thought Michael Crichton problems with the current manwas just trying to sell books. ufactured panic over global Now I know what hubris is. warming. The media uses the term as synonymous with "manElton Graugnard made detrimental global Postdoctoral Fellow warming."

School of Materials Science and Engineering I believe that the panic is Georgia Tech driven by two main impulses.

Many scientists, including those who should know better, are Change Energy Lifestyle driven by funding. Nothing ensures funding like "impending In response to David A. Martin's catastrophe." Various lay letter on global warming, my groups are driven by an almost purpose is not to enter into the theological conviction that global warming debate but to humankind is bad for Earth on add some historical background the whole and can only stop and conclusions. being bad by giving up on When I attended Georgia modern technological society.

Tech in the early '50s, there was The fact that billions would die no air conditioning in the dorms from such a course is not really and most classrooms. Ninetyconsidered. nine percent of the homes in the United States and almost all The bulk of the population automobiles were not air-condihas been somewhat worried by tioned. In two decades, air conthe fearmongering, but wisely ditioning was the norm and chooses to not place a high required building numerous priority on the issue, as surveys power plants to supply the enershow. gy. Now 50 years later as we Bill Brockman, Mgt 73 "enjoy the warm weather," North Atlanta

America with 10 percent of the world's population consumes 30 percent of the world's energy.

On a trip to China in 1999 with members of the Air and Waste Management Association, we talked to many Chinese professionals. They said their primary mission was capital expansion and housing for their citizens. Many multistory apartments had been built or were under construction and did not have air conditioning. I noticed a proliferation of the Chinese equivalent of our room air conditioners on many of these apartment buildings.

Cars were rapidly taking the place of bicycle transportation — clear indicators that the Chinese will soon enjoy our standard of living. China is in many ways similar to the United States of 50 years ago. As Sam Shelton points out in an interview in the same issue of the magazine, China is increasing its oil consumption by 10 percent to 15 percent per year and I predict its overall consumption of energy will increase more rapidly. India is following a similar trend.

Many people say, "Why worry? There is plenty of oil in Canada's oil sands, the western United States' oil shale, in the arctic regions and off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico." This is true, but when China and India start really consuming energy, the natural resources of fossil fuel will rapidly disappear. Mr. Shelton [ALUMNI MAGAZINE, Sum-

mer 2006] outlines very well in his interview the alternative energy sources available and discusses ways of making more efficient buildings, automobiles and appliances to conserve energy. We must change our lifestyles and attitudes. This will no doubt create what > »

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

Hall of Famers Omitted How could you overlook Charles Harrison and Bill Ploeger in the golf article ("Georgia Tech's Giants of the Green," Summer 2006)? I enjoyed it except for this.

Sylvia Harrison Atlanta Charlie Harrison, IM 52, left, won a long list of championships, including the Southern Amateur in 1955, the Atlanta Amateur nine times, the Biltmore Forest Invitational, the Pinetree Invitational, Dogwood Invitational and the Army Championship in 1953. He was inducted into the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame in 1962.

Bill Ploeger, IM 63, right, captained the Georgia Tech golf team and was an honorable mention Ail-American.

Winner of the Georgia Senior Four-Ball twice, he also won the Florida International Four-Ball, the Georgia Senior Amateur and the U.S. Senior Amateur. He was inducted into the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame in 2001.

"Giants of the Green" touched on just a handful of the many golf standouts at the Institute. Other Tech golfers inducted into the Hall of Fame and not mentioned in the Summer issue are James R. Cleveland, Bill Eager, Charles Dannels Jr., Bunky Henry, George D. Johnson Jr., Berrien Moore, Frank Ridley, John Ridley and Ewing Watkins.

we pampered humans call "inconvenience."

Yes, I'm talking about doing away with drive-up windows at fast food restaurants, banks and drugstores to stop wasting idling gas; parking our cars and walking to pick up our kids at school rather than sitting in line for 20 minutes; and combining our trips to run errands to the grocers, etc. Increase subway, bus and other mass transit usage. Add key-operated electricity in hotel rooms as they are doing \n other county \es, \nc\uding China. Adjust the thermometers in our homes and offices.

Ultimately, our single-family homes that are becoming larger and larger will have to be reduced in number. Our gasguzzling large cars and trucks will slowly disappear. We will have to walk to nearby stores rather than "jump in the car."

Reducing energy consumption at the source is the only real method of energy conservation.

I hope that we will all start to reduce our energy consump-

10

tion so that our grandchildren will not have to sleep in a hot bedroom during an Atlanta summer with only a window fan to keep them cool as we did.

Doctor-certified Magazine

delight. I have never seen a

I thought I would let you know

magazine.

section such as this in any how much I enjoy reading your alumni magazine — although I

Albert H. Berst, Arch 54

am a University of Washington

Birmingham, Ala.

Husky.

Melanie M.C. Sauvain Lake Oswego, Ore.

My dad, David P. McBrayer, is a 1950 electrical engineering

Talk Radio Topic

graduate of Georgia Tech and

I'd like to express my concern

sends me the magazine as we

and dismay with the letter you

are both interested in nano-

published — and highlighted

technology.

with a full-page layout —

I find I start reading — and

regarding global warming. This

read the magazine cover to

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cover, \\bas cons'\s\er\Wy we\\-

rather simple partisan rhetoric,

NNitoten and "interesting articles

and serves no purpose other

on the people as well as sci-

than to inflame. One would think

ence and engineering (and yes,

that an alumni magazine for a

if there are Huskies in the

technical school would steer

group, I read the University of

clear of such material or would

Washington medical magazine

at least offer science and facts.

too).

The content of the letter would

I am a medical doctor and

be better kept on talk radio

director of an executive evalua-

where it belongs.

tion center. For several years I

How about we stick to puff

have cut out the [Pacesetter]

pieces about the school, alumni

section in which you feature

and activities?

your graduates and their unique

Jeff Berlin, CE 00

avocations. My patients have

Broomfield, Colo.

enjoyed reading this. It is a

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

We Welcome Mail The ALUMNI MAGAZINE welcomes

letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for clarity, space and content.

Mail I e-mail to: Georgia Tech Alumni Publications 190 North Ave. NW Atlanta, GA 30313 Fax: (404) 385-4637 editor@alumni.gatech.edu

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Family Packs are available for remaining home games! Purchase 4 tickets, 4 hot

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The Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, a professional meeting and learning facility, offers a distraction-free meeting environment that inspires success. Conveniently located in Midtown Atlanta next to the Georgia Tech Hotel, the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center is intentionally engineered for corporate meetings, conferences, and seminars. When the outcome of your meeting matters, discover the ultimate corporate meeting experience.

< REGISTER NOW Have your next corporate meeting on us! Register to win a unique corporate meeting experience. We will give away a two-day meeting for up to 75 people including: • • • •

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As a Georgia Tech Alumni, you are invited for Pre-Registration into the Limited Charter Membership for Validus, A Destination Club, scheduled to launch in November.

Take advantage of special preferred pricing, price holds, and incentives such as Roll Call Contribution, available to Ramblin' Wreck Alumni only.

Please mention your affiliation to Georgia Tech during your inquiry.

Vacation the Right Way; Yours.

Call us at: 678-687-5086 to reserve your membership now.

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Pinehurst, NC • St. Andrews, Scotland • St. Lucia • Barcelona, Spain • Puerto Vallarla, Mexico • I Icrmosa Beach, California * Greece

You can make the best drug in the world, but if the patient doesn't take it, it's useless.

— Mark Prausnitz associate professor at Georgia Tech and inventor of the virtually painless microneedle, in Wired

He pulled a Bobby Cremins.

— Bobby Cremins after agreeing to a six-year contract as men's head basketball coach at the College of Charleston, quoted in the Associated Press about Greg Marshall, who first committed to Charleston but decided to stay at Winthrop University. Cremins committed to South Carolina in 1993, then decided to stay at Georgia Tech.

H

it

1 don't think I would want to develop a career in a place that was very remote.

Bobby's personality, his ability to recruit and his ability to coach — it's a steal for Charleston to get somebody like that. Just his name alone is going to attract every good point guard out there.

— Christine Primmer Senior engineering student at Georgia Tech, considering a manufacturing career because the hands-on nature of working in a plant appeals to her but small towns don't, in The Wall Street Journal

tt Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are

— Paul Hewitt who replaced Bobby Cremins at Tech as men's head basketball coach in 2000, on Cremins coming out of retirement and being named men's basketball coach at the College of Charleston, in The Charlotte Observer

working on a hybrid network that could carry both wired and wireless signals

Some things like 9/11, SARS and $75-a-barrel oil are beyond airline management's control. But for the last 20 years there's been a total disconnect between pricing and costs. Labor has had tremendous leverage in our industry because management just can't allow airlines to stop operating.

It's not like a factory that can stockpile inventory.

— Robert Milton, IM 82 who reorganized Air Canada and is CEO of parent company ACE Holdings, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

on a single optical fiber. The benefit for enterprise customers would be increased availability of high-speed wired and wireless services — including video, corporate applications and broadband Internet access — at conference centers, airports, hotels and eventually small offices.

— Network World online

it These executives are transforming supply chain opera-

tions in an increasingly fastpaced, dynamic and global environment. Their thought leadership is shaping the direction of supply chain solutions — for their companies and for the field as a whole.

— John Vande Vate executive director of Georgia Tech's executive master's in international logistics program, who was named a "2006 pro to know" by Supply & Demand Chain Executive

it We are providing students an opportunity to have their voices heard. This is the gold standard when it comes to motivation.

— Andrea Forte graduate student in the College of Computing, on the use in high school of wikis, a technology that lets readers edit and rewrite Web pages, in The Boston Globe

it If you think of organisms as products, all the bad ones have been recalled. Those that have survived evolved over millions of years. It

really captures the imagination to show how much better organisms are at doing things. The natural world doesn't waste energy, accumulate a large amount of toxins or produce more materials than it uses.

— Marc Weissburg co-director of Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design, in the Associated Press

tt The 2005 season shook insurers' confidence in their models.

— Robert Klein director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance at Georgia Tech, about the jump in insurance rates in states considered high risks to be hit by a hurricane, in Fortune

tt I was shocked and I think other people will be shocked to learn the information they've been handing over.

What we're doing is implicitly trusting a handful of companies with a tremendous amount of our personal information.

— Greg Conti PhD 06, a computer science professor at the U.S. Military Academy, who wrote a report showing how much information free Web services such as Google and Yahoo have about typical Internet users, on Forbes.com

it It's where I learned to play poker, playing 25-, 50-cent games.

— Siddharth Jain, IE 03 who placed 26th in the World Series of Poker main event in August, winning almost $500,000, speaking of his extracurricular activities as a student, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

it

It can boost a person's ego.

This is a power supply that is free, unlimited and not localized to any part of the world. This is one technology that has so much potential.

This is how I pitch it to my students. This technology could have a huge and positive impact on humanity.

— Naresh Malhotra professor of marketing, commenting on customers who splurge $1,000 to buy a golden opulence sundae — five scoops of Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream with exotic candies, bittersweet chocolate, fruit-infused caviar and edible gold leaf — served at Serendipity 3, a dessert cafe on Manhattan's Upper East Side, on lnsideBayArea.com

— Ajeet Rohatgi director of Georgia Tech's Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics, on the promise of solar energy, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

it If you create opportunity, people will come forward and take advantage of it.

— Thomas D. "Danny" Boston professor of economics, on Crain's Cleveland Business on the Web

it My number one goal this summer was to win this tournament and get a wild card into the All-Americans.

So it feels good to be able to commit to something and see it come together like it has.

— Jordan Delass Tech student from Marietta, Ga., who became the first ACC tennis player since 2000 to capture the Intercollegiate Tennis Association National Summer Championships singles title, on CBS' College Sports TV news

it Nissan just sees an opportunity. What better time to try to make a strategic investment than when the target is financially hurting?

Charles Mulford INVESCO chair and director of Georgia Tech's MBA program, on exploratory discussions between GM, Nissan and Renault, in the Detroit Free Press

tt Security, safety and sex are the big concerns. People are going to be having sex with robots in the next five years.

— Henrik Christensen KUKA chair of robotics at Tech and one of the organizers of a new robo-ethics group, in The Economist

tt Imagine there's a ring around your head a meter

away from your body. If you need to walk straight, the sound will come from straight ahead. If you need to turn a comer, the sound will seem to come from the right.

Turn your body until the sound is in front of you again — and away you go.

— Bruce Walker assistant professor of psychology and designer of the auditory interface of a wearable computer for the blind, in Technology Review

tt This is big business. These are not kids. These are organized [criminals].

— Merrick Furst associate dean in the College of Computing, who has raised $2.5 million in seed money to fight the No. 1 emerging Internet threat, bot armies, in the Atlanta Business Chronicle

I like to think of it as constructive criticism. I'm not going to pad it.

— VernYip MS Mgt 94, M Arch 95, concerning his critiques as a judge on the TV show "Design Star," in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

15

FOCUS When management major Aubrie Lee, peeking from among the costumes at right, isn't busy with class work, she's usually busy at DramaTech Theater. As president of DramaTech, Lee is preparing for the theater troupe's upcoming anniversary season. To celebrate its 60th year, DramaTech, under the direction of Greg Abbott, below, will revisit plays that have captivated audiences over the past six decades. The curtain rises on the anniversary season with "The Lion in Winter," which will run Nov. 3-4, 8-11 and 15-18. Stephen Sondheim's controversial musical "Assassins" returns to Tech Feb. 23-24 and 28 and March 1-3 and 7-10. Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" will run April 13-14 and 18-21. Audiences will be treated to two one-act plays in the summer: "The Valiant," the first play performed by the group in 1947, and Samuel Beckett's "Act Without Words II." "Rumors" will be performed June 22-23 and 27-30 and July 4-7.

The season will close with "Macbeth" in the fall of 2007. >Âť Photos: Gary Meek

- * ^ " ^ ^

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

September 2006 • Statement of Ownership Management and Circulation (Required by 39 USC 3685) Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Publication No. 1061-9747 Frequency: Quarterly No. of issues published annually: Four Annual subscription price: $10 Publisher—Joseph P. Irwin, 190 North Ave., Atlanta, GA 30313 Editor-^John C. Dunn, 190 North Ave., Atlanta, GA 30313 Managing Editor—Kimberly Link-Wills, 190 North Ave., Atlanta, GA 30313 Owner—Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 190 North Ave. NW, Atlanta, GA 30313 • Known bondholders, mortgagees and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None • Tax Status, The purpose, function and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes: Has not changed during the preceding 12 months.

Extent and nature of circulation

Average No. Summer 2006 Copies Each Single Issue Issue During Nearest to Preceding Mos Filing Date

a. Total No. Copies (Net Press Run) b. Paid and/or Requested Circulation (l)Outside-County Mail

32,250

34,800

26,628

29,283

Subscriptions Stated on Form Form 3541. (Include advertiser's proof and exchange copies)

(2) Paid In-County Subscriptions ,. None

None

radition, convenience, versatility and elegance

t

Georgia Tech Alumni Association ivelcomes you erience historic Atlanta and the magic of Georgia big your next event at the Alumni House.

mm p M H L ,

Atf

mated off of 1-85/1-75 in the heart of Atlanta, the Alumni House Event Space is an ideal place to host meetings, luncheons, receptions, rehearsal dinners as well as other business and personal occasions. Richly endowed with Southern culture, the Alumni House was built in 1912 and has a distinctiveness all its own.

in accommodate 250guests for standing or ts, 150 guests for theater-style events and up to »r seated meals.

For reservations and information: gtalumni.org/house or (404) 894-2391

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4,945

4,974

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4,974

31,573

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(Sum of 15dand 15e)

g. Total Distribution

U-M/'Jia fe'JD nlllllllU nJj'J'Jiilll'Ji)

Ameh 'Jail k( iM'jiulfflifrjiKt

Georgia Tech A1 u mn i A s i o c i a t i on

Each year the Georgia Tech Alumni Association recognizes alumni for exemplary service to Tech, the community and the world.

Nominations are being accepted through November 3.

Dean Griffin Community Service Award Recognizes an alumnus who has performed exemplary community service work, The primary considerations are: • Service in a long-term volunteer capacity • Impact on the quality of life of others • Demonstrated leadership and creative ability to deal with societal problems proactively • Setting an example for others to follow

(Sum of 15c and 15f)

h. Copies not distributed

677

543

i. Total (Sum of 25g and h)

32,250

34,800

j,

84,3%

85.4%

Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation

This statement of ownership will b e printed in the Fall 2006 issue of this publication.

I certify that the statements m a d e by me above are correct a n d complete J o s e p h P. Irwin Publisher

18

G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

Outstanding Young Alumnus Award Honors a young alumnus under age of forty who graduated within 20 years of March 15, 2007. This award recognizes one who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in his/her profession and significant service to Georgia Tech and its Alumni Association.

The three primary considerations are: • Service to Georgia Tech and its Alumni Association • Service to the general welfare of their community « Service to their profession

Nomination forms available online at www.gtalumni.org/awards

INFOCUS>>

'ho

Join the .IIC Crowd

Christina McMillian and her mother, Linda, weren't the only people unpacking before the fall semester began. Georgia Tech welcomed its largest freshman class ever — more than 2,800 students — and sent campus housing officials scrambling to accommodate them. "We created 160 temporary triple rooms in Folk, Caldwell and Towers halls," says Dan Morrison, associate director of Residence Life. "This means 480 freshman students are living three to a room. We had to get extra beds, wardrobes, chairs and work surfaces in about five weeks." The influx of freshmen also put a strain on housing for upperclassmen. "We had over 120 returning students on our waiting list in July," Morrison says. "Normally, we would have been able to get many of them into a space, but could not this year due to the large freshman class." Next year will bring new issues as Tech's largest sophomore class, which is guaranteed on-campus housing, arrives with luggage in tow. » > Photo: Rob Felt

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

>>INFOCUS

Yellow Jackets Fly By 100-year Mark

20

The first newspaper cartoon referring to Georgia Tech's football team as the Yellow Jackets appeared 100 years ago on Nov. 7, 1906. The Atlanta Journal illustration depicted a yellow jacket threatening a Georgia football player and warning, "Somebody's going to get stung." It wasn't until after the legendary John Heisman became head coach that Tech's gridiron warriors officially claimed the name that would have both a ring and sting to it. In an Atlanta Constitution article printed on Oct. 29, 1905, Heisman announced that he wanted the Tech team referred to only as the Yellow Jackets. Until that point, Georgia Tech's football players had been known as Blacksmiths, Techity Techs, Tech Boys and sometimes even Yellow Jackets. The colors varied too. Tech's colors of white and gold were often displayed as white and yellow.

Tech teams often wore yellow jerseys back in those early days because gold-colored fabric was not available.

Under Heisman, the jerseys may have been yellow, but the years were golden. GT

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

T E C H NOTES Gary Meek

Schuster New Provost "I am eager to work with colleagues throughout the campus to set high goals and to provide the environment needed to realize those goals." â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Gary Schuster

22

Gary B. Schuster has succeeded Jean Lou Chameau as provost, Georgia Tech's chief academic officer.

Schuster, above, had been dean of the College of Sciences and a chemistry professor since 1994.

"He has had an outstanding career as a teacher and researcher and that, combined with his long tenure as a school chair at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and as a dean here on our campus, provides him with a clear appreciation of what it takes to be an outstanding provost," says President Wayne Clough.

"I have had the pleasure of working with him for 12 years at Tech and have admired his innovative and collaborative approach to ideas and his understanding of our goals we have for excellence in our teaching, research and service missions," Clough says.

Schuster has had leading roles in bringing internationally recognized research faculty to the Institute and in the conceptualization and development of the interdisciplinary biotechnology complex at Georgia Tech. He has published more than 250 articles, holds 12 patents and has received numerous fellowships and awards.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

"I am eager to continue to work with colleagues throughout the campus to set high goals and to provide the environment needed to realize those goals," Schuster says.

He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Clarkson College of Technology and doctorate from the University of Rochester.

Professor Kent Barefield has been named inter-

im dean of the College of Sciences. Chameau left his post as provost to serve as president of the California Institute of Technology.

Tech's Engineering in Top 10 Georgia Tech's College of Engineering is the only engineering college in the United States with all its

ranked programs in the top 10 of their specialty areas, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The eight schools offering undergraduate programs — the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, > »

"We are always pushing the envelope in research and education."

— Dean Don Giddens

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

23

>>TECHNOTES

the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the George Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering — were ranked in the top 10.

"Our engineering programs continue to be recognized as the best," says President Wayne Clough.

"The consistency of the rankings of the individual engineering programs bodes well for our continued success."

Aerospace engineering ranked second, biomedical engineering placed fourth, civil engineering ranked third and industrial engineering ranked first. Electrical engineering and mechanical engineering both placed sixth, computer engineering ranked seventh, materials engineering placed ninth and chemical engineering ranked tenth.

"Our students, faculty and staff are among the very best in the nation," says College of Engineering Dean Don Giddens. "We are always pushing the envelope in research and education. There is a collegial 'can do' spirit here that is remarkable."

Professor Dickerson Endows Chair

"Steve Dickerson (above) is a shining example of an academic who utilized creative thinking to create success through the formation of patents and companies."

— Joseph Hughes, chair of civil and environmental engineering

24

Georgia Tech emeritus professor Stephen L. Dickerson and his wife, Jane, have provided $1.5 million to create the first endowed chair in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Pending final approval from the Board of Regents, the post will be named the Frederick R. Dickerson chair in honor of the retired professor's late father.

The chair is intended to serve as the foundation for research and education efforts in urban transportation systems, particularly the application of advanced communications and computing to facilitate congestion reduction and energy efficiency. The chair's research will help alleviate traffic and air pollution through real-time communications and data processing that enhances public transit, ride-sharing systems and car rentals.

"A great father and mother, the benefit I received from association with Georgia Tech and the desire to contribute to resolving a significant problem all motivated our gift to Tech," Dickerson says.

Although Dickerson's research as a professor

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

in Tech's School of Mechanical Engineering was in manufacturing automation, he has experience in the field of transportation. He served a year with the U.S. Department of Transportation, started a successful bus and van-pool service in metro Atlanta in 1975 and once taught the graduate urban transportation course in civil engineering.

An honorary Tech alumnus, Dickerson is an Alumni Association trustee and member of the Phoenix Club, Presidents' Council and Hill Society.

He holds several patents that have been the basis for Georgia Tech spin-off companies in robots and machine vision for manufacturing applications.

"The establishment of the Frederick R. Dickerson chair is a significant step for the school," says Joseph Hughes, chair of civil and environmental engineering. "To continue to compete at the highest levels and solve the world's largest infrastructure problems, we need to have endowments in place that allow innovative faculty to work with their students on asking new questions and creating new solutions.

"Steve Dickerson is a shining example of an academic who utilized creative thinking to create success through the formation of patents and companies. Whoever steps in as the Frederick R. Dickerson chair can learn a lot from looking at Steve's experiences."

Movie Pirates Will Encounter Curse of Computing Technology Georgia Tech is preparing to deliver a technological broadside aimed at movie pirates who steal the show and wreak havoc on the motion picture industry.

A prototype device developed by the College of Computing's Interactive and Intelligent Computing division has received widespread media play and gotten a hooray from Hollywood.

The film industry has lost a treasure chest full of money to piracy — an estimated $3.5 billion in 2005 alone.

Gregory Abowd, an associate professor leading the project, says the technology is actually off-theshelf equipment, including camera-mounted sensors, lighting devices, a projector and a computer, which scans, finds and neutralizes digital cameras.

The origin of most pirated content is from » >

The birth of the furless, blind, 4-ounce baby was met with tears, cheers and the clinking of glasses as Zoo Atlanta and its president and CEO, Dennis Kelly, ME 76, celebrated the longwanted delivery of a panda cub in early September.

The mother, Lun Lun, and the male, Yang Yang, arrived on loan from China in 1999 in large part due to the work of Kelly's predecessor, Tech psychology professor Terry Maple, the keeper of the zoo for 17 years, and Rebecca Snyder, MS Psy 96, PhD 00, the first Institute graduate student to study pandas in China, where she met the pair shortly after their births and continued to watch over them as curator of giant panda research and management in Atlanta.

Compared at birth to the size of a stick of butter, the panda cub is completely dependent upon its mother.

Its eyes won't fully open for the first two months, and it won't begin walking for a month or two after that.

Nursing will continue until after the cub marks its second birthday.

The cuteness factor comes sooner. The distinctive black markings appear within about 10 days of birth, and cubs grow a full coat of fur in about a month.

Per Chinese custom, a naming ceremony will come 100 days after the birth.

Nineteen days after she gave birth, Lun Lun left the cub long enough for zoo workers to determine the baby panda is a female.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

25

>>TECHNOTES In 2000,26-year-old Chris Klaus gave Georgia Tech $15 million for construction of a building that bears his name and opens with a ribboncutting ceremony Oct. 26, An open house will take place at the Klaus Advanced Computing Building the next day.

video cameras filming in theaters, Abowd says. A camcorder's image sensor called a CCD is retroflective — it sends light back to its origin. Retroreflections can identify video cameras in a darkened theater and send a neutralization beam at the camera lens rendering the images unusable.

Techniques for Surviving Tech What does it take to make the dean's list at Georgia Tech?

In its annual "Survival Guide" for freshman students the Technique observes that it "only takes a 3.0. Sounds easy, doesn't it?"

Then the student newspaper adds almost tauntingly, "Just wait."

The newspaper gave Tech's largest freshman class of about 2,800 students a hard-nosed reception concerning the rigors of academic life at the Institute.

In its dictionary of essential terms the Technique defines the letter A: "The first letter of the alphabet.

Neil B. McGahee

Horror Movie Backdrop Scenes from an upcoming film placed the Georgia Tech campus and Technology Square on center stage. "One Missed Call," directed by Eric Valette and starring Shannyn Sossamon, is a remake of the 2003 Japanese horror film "Chakushin Art." The movie is scheduled to be released in theaters next year.

26

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

It also allegedly appears on grade reports. We'll believe it when we see it."

As for receiving faculty honors, the newspaper notes it requires a 4.0 and quips, "Keep dreaming."

The newspaper gives students some hope for preparing for exams under the definition for "Word." "Old tests and notes to help you study for tests," the Technique states. "Some professors change their tests all the time, but remember that most people are lazy."

IBM Buys ISS for $1.3 billion Internet Security Systems, the company Chris Klaus, Cls 96, founded in his dorm room at Georgia Tech in 1994, has been sold to IBM for $1.3 billion.

Klaus developed a revolutionary software program to protect vital computer systems from attack by hackers.

In a statement released by ISS, company president and CEO Tom Noonan, ME 83, said, "Clients increasingly recognize that security must become a network-integrated business process rather than a reactive response to individual threats. By delivering an integrated security platform that is adaptable and extensible to address new threats and business requirements without incremental complexity and cost, ISS has delivered the foundation for delivering security as a service. These ondemand capabilities, together with our managed security services, appliances and software will further bolster IBM's leading security services and products as we take this innovation out to a larger, global stage."

In 2000, Klaus gave Tech one of the largest gifts in its history: $15 million for the construction of the Christopher W. Klaus Advanced Computing Building, which opens this fall.

"I saw this as an opportunity to help move Georgia Tech into being a beacon for the information age," Klaus said. "It is a wonderful feeling to give back to what's enabled my own success and the success of ISS."

Good Time Had By All More than 660 tailgaters — including an assortment of walk-up Fighting Irishmen and women lured to the Tech Tower lawn by the aromas of sim-

Photos: Ethan Trewhitt

mering shellfish, Cajun sausage and pulled pork and the sounds of the Yellow Jackets marching band and rock group BulletProof — celebrated kickoff of the football season Sept. 2, when Tech hosted Notre Dame for the first time in 26 years.

Games and face painting were available for kids and the young at heart. Photos with the Ramblin' Wreck were offered to all football fans who purchased tailgate party passes. Buzz, the Tech cheerleaders and the marching band helped rev up the already enthusiastic crowd.

Although tailgaters were uniformly dressed in Tech colors and white and gold pom-poms were everywhere, a number of football game ticket

holders wearing green made their way to the Alumni Association's registration table.

"Can a Notre Dame fan get something to eat?" one man with a large shamrock painted on his shirt asked. In a true display of Southern hospitality, the man and his group, all similarly attired, were sold tickets and invited to rub elbows with Jackets.

For a while, the football team appeared to be bulletproof. Tech led 10-7 at halftime, but lost the contest in the fourth quarter 14-10. GT Details are available at www.gtalumni.org for more pregame revelry — the Oct. 21 bus trip to Clemson, the Oct. 28 Homecoming tailgate picnic before the Miami game and the Nov. 25 trek to the University of Georgia.

The Alumni Association's tailgate party prior to the game against Notre Dame drew hundreds of football fans to the Tech Tower lawn for food, friendship and music, which included a stirring performance by the Georgia Tech marching band.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

27

lirivMMmi Travel

Jotiv us otv Saturday, October 14, 2006 10 CU.WV. - 12 tkl4is.

atthe^ QeorqLo; Tech AUUMMI A^oclatiorV 190 North Ave,., AtLaMtcu PRESENTED

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Tour Operators: AHI International • Clipper Cruises * Thomas R Gohagan & Company • Intrav International Expeditions • Lindblad Expeditions • Go Next Travel To RSVP for the Travel Preview call Martin Ludwig, Director of Travel, at 4 0 4 - 8 9 4 - 0 7 5 8 or 800-GT-ALUMS ( 4 8 2 - 5 8 6 7 ) or e-mail martin.ludwig@alumni.gatech.edu.

Expedition to Antarctica January 12-25 Panama Canal Cruise i

January 31-February 11 Rome & Florence March 16-24 Egypt: Gift of the Nile March 23-April 1 Treasures of Japan April 4-14 Holland & Belgium April 27-May 5 Cruise the Treasures of Italy April 28-May 10

French Riviera May 11-22

Berlin, Dresden & Prague June 16-26

Sardinia & Corsica May 18-29

Cruise the Baltic Sea June 19-27

China & the Yangtze River May 27-June 11

Romance of the Blue Danube June 28-July 11

Exploring Vietnam September 19-October 4 Spain September 21-October 2 Enchanting Ireland September 28-October 6

Celtic Lands May 29-June 9

Journey of the Czars July 6-19

Alaska's Coastal Wilderness June 9-16

Amazon Family Voyage July 20-29

October 13-21

Italian Riviera June 9-17

Eastern Europe August 6-17

October 14-20

Dalmatian Coast June 12-20

Scotland August 30-September 10

Great Journey through Europe June 13-23

Sicily September 8-19

Greece & Turkey

In the Wake of Lewis & Clark

Journey to India November 29-December 15 New Zealand December 9-22

INVEST IN GEORGIA TECH T H E 6 0 T H A N N U A L ROLL C A L L IS N O W UNDERWAY

ROLLCALL Your Gift Enhances the Value of Every Tech Degree

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When you display this window decal, you are letting the world know that you are a Roll Call donor and you love Georgia Tech. Your Roll Call gift provides essential unrestricted funding to the Institute, and is an investment in Georgia Tech.

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

29

By Tekla S. Perry

ames D. Meindl, director of the Microelectronics Research Center at Georgia Tech, Joseph M. Pettit chair in microelectronics and recently named director of the Nanotechnology Research Center, says the most important part of his job is making graduate school fun and exciting.

Lots of professors make the same claim, of course, but Meindl, the winner of the 2006 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honor, has an explosive story to prove it.

It was the mid-1970s, and Meindl was a professor at Stanford University. His group had just paid more than $1 million for a shiny new epitaxial reactor, in which atoms are deposited layer by layer to produce semiconductor devices, usually experimental ones. It was the latest and greatest tool of the day, and Meindl assigned one of his newest and brightest students to see what it could do.

The department's safety rules forbade students from working alone, but that new student wasn't much for following rules. One night, working by himself, he opened a valve to let silane gas flow into the reactor. Alas, he'd forgotten to purge the air out of the chamber, and silane explodes on contact with oxygen. The resulting blast ripped the reactor out of the wall. The student was lucky to escape serious injury.

Clearly, he had to be punished. Meindl couldn't bring himself to do it, so he prevailed upon a colleague, who banned the young man from the laboratory for two weeks.

Even today, Meindl beams when discussing that brash young researcher. And well he might: That student, T.J. Rodgers, went on to found Cypress Semiconductor Corp. in San Jose, Calif. Last year Cypress had $886 million in revenues.

"Those were the good old days, when well-meaning accidents were just punished by a slap on the wrist," Rodgers says today. >Âť Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

,•••.

p

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

WIZARD OF WATTS: Tech Professor James Meindl and the Challenge of Nanotechn

B

efore he met Meindl, Rodgers recalls, he had never worked on big problems involving the coordination of many individual research efforts. He had never heard of Silicon Valley and had never known an engineer who had started a company. Meindl brought him into this incredibly exciting world, he recalls, and "it was thrilling."

After earning his PhD Meindl says of his students, "My reward is in electrical engineer- . to see them succeed." He's been very well rewarded. Rodgers was one of some 80 engineers ing in 1958, Meindl who did their graduate work under MeindTs took a job at Westingtutelage. Among the others are William Brody, house as one of the president of Johns Hopkins University; Levy company's first semiGerzberg, president of Zoran Corp., the Silicon conductor engineers, Valley company that has signal-processing hardHe loved the job. "I ware in just about every digital camera today; and Richard Swanson, who founded SunPower, got to buy and burn a pioneer in high-efficiency solar cells purchased out transistors that

by Cypress in 2002. cost about a thousand Another Meindl disciple, L. Rafael Reif, dollars each," he provost at the Massachusetts Institute of recalls. "I learned that Technology, says, "I try to emulate everything electrical engineering about him: I listen to everyone. I try to find the can be a lot of fun." kernels of truth in what people are saying. 1 try always to find the glass half full."

Gerzberg credits the success of Zoran to the lessons he learned from Meindl. And Jim Plummer, dean of engineering at Stanford, declares, "There is no other individual who has had more of an impact on my career than Jim Meindl."

For many professors, it would be legacy enough to have sent so many students into the hallowed halls of academia and the boardrooms of Silicon Valley. But for Meindl, it's just part of the story. He also did pathbreaking research in the design of low-power circuits and in the interconnects that link blocks of logic in a chip. It was for those achievements — specifically, his "pioneering contributions to microelectronics, including low-power, biomedical, physical limits and on-chip interconnect networks" — that he was awarded this year's IEEE Medal of Honor.

A

nd yet, when Meindl started out in technology, half a century ago, semiconductors were little more than laboratory curiosities. Enrolling in 1951 at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University)

32

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

mm

in Pittsburgh, he planned to get a degree in power engineering and then design heavy electrical equipment at Westinghouse Electric Corp., where his father worked. But in 1955, Carnegie's graduate power engineering department abruptly vanished: One professor quit and another changed fields.

Meindl, then just starting graduate school, was open to suggestions about what to do next, and professor Edward Schatz had one. The U.S. military was trying to improve its communications systems and needed an energetic graduate student to analyze the loss of radio-frequency signals transmitted through coaxial cables. The goal was to come up with equations that would describe the signal loss and allow engineers to build better cables.

Meindl solved the problem in 24 months, in the process becoming quite well versed in Maxwell's equations, the set of four equations describing the behavior of electric and magnetic fields and their relationships to each other and to electric-charge and electric-current density.

Facility with these equations, which are considered to be the foundation of electrical engineering, gave Meindl the insights he needed to understand that latest electronic marvel, the semiconductor.

Meindl got his PhD in electrical engineering in 1958. He took a job at Westinghouse, as he'd planned all along, but not as a power engineer.

Instead, he became one of the company's first semiconductor engineers. His initial assignment was to use silicon-controlled rectifiers — diodes that must be triggered by a voltage pulse in order to conduct current — as part of an electronic system that would manage the control rods of a nuclear reactor.

He loved the job. "I got to buy and burn out transistors that cost about a thousand dollars each," he recalls. "And I learned that electrical engineering can be a lot of fun."

Unfortunately, the fun only lasted about a year. In 1959 he received a summons from the U.S. Army. It was payback time. Meindl, a member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program during college, went on active duty.

"Here I was, working," he recalls. "I had a great job, I had bought my first new car and I just

—

—

Date of birth: April 20,1933 Birthplace: Pittsburgh Family: Wife, Frederica; children, Peter and Candace Education: BS, MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1955,1956 and 1958 First job: Usher, Terrace Theater, East Pittsburgh First technical job: Insulator tester, Westinghouse Electronics Corp., Pittsburgh j# Oddest job: Blacksmith's helper Patents: About 10 ' i Corporate board memberships: SanDisk Corp., Zoran Corp., Stratex Networks Inc. Most recent book read: "The Innovator's Dilemma," by Clayton M. Christensen (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) Favorite composer: Cole Porter Computer: IBM ThinkPad favorite restaurant: Park 75, Atlanta Favorite movie: "True Grit" Car: Lexus sedan Organizational memberships: IEEE (life fellow), U.S. National Academy of Engineering, American Association for the Advancement of Science

felt that the world is a really good place. And suddenly, here comes Uncle Sam." He ended up at the Army Signal Research and Development Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, N.J. It turned out to be "the most fortunate unwanted experience" of his life. For one thing, he met his future wife, Frederica. She was an administrative assistant for MeindTs supervising officer. They had their first date that October, and the rest, Meindl says, is history.

Encountering his life partner wasn't the only happy surprise at Fort Monmouth. There was also his work assignment, which turned out to be a lot more interesting than he was expecting: He worked with integrated circuits — a field then barely six months old.

Just after Meindl arrived at the R&D labs, the Army awarded a research contract to Dallasbased Texas Instruments Inc., where Jack Kilby had built one of the first ICs. Meindl became the technical liaison for the project. He met Kilby in November; a few months later, early in 1959, he visited Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce at

The Meindl Brief

Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. in Palo Alto, Calif.

Those three pioneers taught Meindl about the nascent field, and he began his own research, trying to figure out how to make an IC operate at a power level so low that it could be used inside a helmet as part of a radio receiver. Meindl stayed at Fort Monmouth for eight years, two as an Army officer and six more as a civilian.

In the early 1960s, hardly any engineers outside the military were interested in minimizing the power used by electronics. Metal-oxide semiconductors, which consumed significantly less power than their bipolar predecessors, were in their infancy and had stability problems. But as the decade went on, the growing popularity of the quartz watch and the in-ear hearing aid, both of which could accommodate only tiny batteries, brought attention to the need for low-power circuits. Still, when Meindl published his first and only book, "Micropower Circuits" (Wiley) in 1969, you could count the number of copies sold on two hands.

But Meindl was onto something. "Even > »

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WIZARD OF WATTS: Tech Professor James Meindl and the Challenge of Nanotechn

at a time when few people worried about power consumption, he thought it was an interesting area to explore, because it would eventually become a big issue," Plummer says. And so it has: Laptop computers, cell phones and iPods illustrate that product design today is all about reducing power consumption and extending battery life.

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y 1966, several professors at Stanford were encouraging Meindl to leave New Jersey and join them in California. In 1967, John Linvill, then chair of the electrical engineering department at Stanford, made Meindl an offer he couldn't refuse. Linvill had come up with an idea for a system that would let blind people — including his own young daughter, Candace — read.

It would use a camera to take a picture of the letters on a page and then translate that picture to a tiny pad of vibrating pins. With training, Linvill reasoned, a blind person would be able to place a finger on the pad and decipher the text.

But making such a device portable and useful required two custom-designed, low-power chips.

One chip would act as the image sensor — a solid-state camera, basically, at a time when they were experimental. The other chip would operate at a high voltage to vibrate the tactile array, consuming as little power as possible to prolong battery life.

Meindl worked on the project for about a year, along with several graduate students, including Plummer.

"We had significant problems," Plummer recalls. They were using MOS devices in a highvoltage application — which no one had done before. After a lot of trial and error with the voltage levels, they finally found one that was high enough for the vibration to be felt by the user and yet low enough to keep the devices from burning out.

The group dubbed the device the Optacon, for optical-to-tactile converter, and demonstrated it for the first time at the 1969 International SolidState Circuits Conference in Philadelphia.

Candace Linvill demonstrated the converter, and she got a standing ovation. "That," Meindl says, "was the most thrilling moment in engi>»

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Meindl came to Tech in 1993 to lead the Microelectronics Research Center.

His research at the Institute has included exploring solutions to interconnectivity problems that arise from trying to interconnect billions of transistors within a tiny chip.

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WIZARD OF WATTS: Tech Professor James Meindl and the Challenge of Nanotechno

In 1986, Meindl left research for the "drastically different" job of provost at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But life as a provost wasn't as rosy as Meindl had anticipated. In 1993, he went back to doing what truly makes him happy: teaching and research, this time at Georgia Tech.

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neering work that I have ever had." He later named his own daughter Candace to honor Linvill's daughter and the moment.

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n 1970 Linvill, Meindl and their team rolled the technology out into a company, Telesensory Systems Inc., now a division of the Singapore company Insiphil. Telesensory produced tens of thousands of the devices and sold them around the world. Today, text-to-speech converters have supplanted the Optacon, but it was an important aid in its time.

Telesensory never made its founders a fortune, but that didn't bother Meindl. Throughout his career, he says, he and his co-workers have always selected "areas that could have the most impact."

Inspired by that moment at the 1969 conference, Meindl asked a group of his Stanford students to develop novel low-power sensors and circuits for use in medical research. Gerzberg, who was part of the group, recalls that challenges were everywhere: in signal-processing algorithms, in circuit design, in chip fabrication, in systems integration and in coordinating with medical researchers.

Gerzberg also remembers that Meindl's enthusiasm never wavered. "Once I gave him a demo of a prototype I had built, the first time I had it working, and he actually stood up and clapped his hands for several minutes. He always made me feel so good."

The students built sensor packages that could be implanted in research animals, transmitting physiological data while the animal went about its normal activities. A medical researcher inserted one such sensor package in a monkey fetus still in the mother's uterus. The monkey mother eventually went into natural labor; the researcher then wirelessly activated the sensor package to provide the first detailed information about the baby's physiological experience during birth.

Meindl and several graduate students designed another device to measure the velocity of blood cells as they flowed through different parts of the body. Meindl attended a procedure in which a surgeon used this device to monitor the progress of a heart valve replacement; after

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

the artificial valve had been sewn into place, the flowmeter flagged a problem with the new valve, and the surgeon quickly replaced it, possibly saving the patient's life.

Another achievement at Stanford hasn't saved any lives, but it has saved many designers countless hours of R&D time. In 1971, Meindl posed a simple question to graduate student Swanson: Theoretically, what is the lowest possible voltage at which an arbitrary complementary metal-oxide semiconductor circuit could operate?

Knowing this value would prevent circuit designers from exploring dead ends â&#x20AC;&#x201D; techniques that would drive the voltage so low the designs wouldn't work. Swanson determined that the minimum voltage is a multiple of the thermal energy of the material, with that multiple changing in a predictable way depending on the temperature of the material. Circuit designers the world over still use that fundamental limit.

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y the mid-1980s, after nearly two decades at Stanford, Meindl was ready for a new challenge. "I'd had a number of rewarding experiences," he says. "The question was whether I was going to do this for another two decades or try something drastically different."

"Drastically different" won. In 1986 he moved to Troy, N.Y., to become the provost of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The job appealed to Meindl for two reasons. First, he saw being a provost as an intellectual smorgasbord â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no longer would he be simply interacting with his engineering colleagues: He would learn about new ideas in every department. Second, he was excited about the idea of having a discretionary budget to fund ideas and reap their returns.

Life as a provost, however, was not as rosy as Meindl had anticipated. Colleges across the United States had begun feeling the waning of the post-World War II baby boom, as the socalled baby bust took its toll on their applicant pools. And Rensselaer, more than most U.S. universities, lived or died on tuition income. So for seven years Meindl cut departmental budgets and cut them again. For a guy who liked to make people happy, it was not a happy time. Still, he kept his cool and deftly handled the faculty, recalls Robert Loewy, then a professor at Rens-

selaer and now chair of the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Meindl kept a hand in electrical engineering by advising two graduate students — Vivek De, now manager of low-power circuit technology at Intel Corp. in Hillsboro, Ore., and Bhavna Agrawal, now team leader for analog computeraided design at IBM Corp. in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a bright patch in an otherwise dark stretch.

"Last time I heard," Meindl beams proudly, "one of those students [Del had the secondlargest number of patents of any Intel employee."

In 1993, enough was finally enough. Meindl went back to doing what truly makes him happy: teaching and research, this time at Georgia Tech.

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oday, at 73, Meindl is a happy man again.

He is pursuing one of his long-standing interests: optimizing the arrangement of interconnect wires that connect blocks of logic circuitry on a chip. The Interconnect Focus Center in Atlanta, a major R&D effort he organized eight years ago with 13 U.S. universities, recently demonstrated a new high-speed optical modulator mechanism for silicon chips, a key component in future optical interconnects.

Says Plummer, "Back when most people had yet to recognize that interconnects would be a limiter in silicon chips, Jim launched a national program to tackle the issue."

Indeed, the semiconductor industry has come around to Meindl's way of thinking. > »

Meindl, director of the Nanotechnology Research Center at Georgia Tech, meets with Gov. Sonny Perdue. The state allocated $45 million toward the $84 million facility, scheduled to open in mid-2008.

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WIZARD OF WATTS: Tech Professor James Meindl and the Challenge of Nanotechnology

Engineers today recognize interconnects as a major impediment to the performance trajectory that microprocessors have been on for the past 35 years. It is the wires, not the transistors themselves, that are sucking up power, threatening chip performance and dragging out design cycles. In today's billion-plus transistor chips, which have multiple layers of wires connecting transistors and many kilometers of interconnects per square centimeter, the wires cost more than the transistors.

So far, Meindl and his Georgia Tech team, most prominently Jeff Davis, an associate professor in computer engineering, have come up with a mathematical method to predict the distribution of interconnect lengths within a chip. That is, From his work with the Focus Center to his participation on company boards to the challenge of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, Meindl â&#x20AC;&#x201D; eight years past retirement age â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is not thinking of slowing down anytime soon.

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given the size of a network of logic blocks that must be wired and a set of possible lengths of each wire, a designer can predict how many wires are likely to have each length. The designer can use that information to select the optimal widths for the wires of each length for maximum performance at the lowest cost before beginning to actually lay out the chip.

Meindl's group is also trying to find ways to use tube-like interconnects to remove heat from a chip; such wires would move cooling water in and out of the chip using a nascent technology known as microfluidics.

In between his research and teaching, Meindl finds time to rim the Focus Center and also act as Georgia Tech's site director for the National

Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network. And he's on the boards of three companies: SanDisk, Zoran and Stratex Networks. Eight years past the traditional retirement age, Meindl is not thinking of slowing down anytime soon.

Nanotechnology and its potential for pushing the envelope of chip design beckons. In one project, he and his students are trying to wire chips with carbon nanotubes instead of copper traces.

But still, fundamentally, it's about the students. Serving on boards, Meindl says, makes him a better graduate adviser, because it helps him understand how companies operate, what research is needed and what opportunities await new graduates. Involvement with large research

cooperatives means he can keep track of activities at a host of universities and spot opportunities for his students to become innovators.

And he really needs to understand nanotechnology, he says, because "it is going to infest every branch of engineering. Students will have to know about it to use the latest developments, no matter what area of technology they pursue."

Continuing to challenge himself daily in the field he loves, Meindl forges ahead. His busy schedule keeps him on the go, from classroom to boardroom to research lab. As he passes through a hotel lobby, he has a personal greeting and compliment for every one of the hotel staff members, leaving a trail of smiles in his wake. For Jim Meindl, it's still about making people happy, GT

Breaking ground for the Nanotechnology Research Center, shown in an artist's rendering, are, left to right, Meindl, Tech President Wayne Clough, Marcus Foundation chair Bernie Marcus, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and Erroll Davis Jr., chancellor of the University System of Georgia.

Bella Umbria Seventeenth century villa provides taste of Italy and hospitality business

By Kimberly Link-Wills Evans Photos: Gary Meek Italy Photos: Courtesy Susan Evans

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usan Evans saw beyond the crumbling stone structures inhabited by sheep and pigs, devoid of electricity and plumbing, and made it her business to share her vision of 21st century life in a 17th century Italian villa.

Evans, IE 89, grew up in Tucker, Ga., but has been living in Europe for the past decade. An apartment in Brussels served as her stopping point between business trips at the time of her first Italian holiday in 2000, when she rented a villa with a group of friends.

Another vacation in Italy followed the next year. Although there were some problems with the accommodations, Evans felt relaxed. She felt at home.

"Even a bad day was a good day in Italy," she says.

Back in Belgium, she began researching the possibility of buying a home in Umbria, a region of Italy she found less developed than Tuscany and populated with olive groves stretching over the countryside and cypress trees reaching skyward.

"My mom has a cousin who has a cousin who lives in Rome," says Evans, recalling when the cousin's cousin called and said, '"My friend Shirley's son Ricky can help you.' He helped foreigners buy property and helped with the restoration. I about fell out of my chair. It was perfect."

Ricky turned out to be Riccardo Caracciolo, an architect who, in another stroke of luck, speaks fluent English.

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Rome

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ITALY

The architect found a farmhouse in Sismano that belonged to an honest-togoodness contessa, who lived less than a kilometer away in a 400-year-old castle once owned by the Vatican.

"Many of the families that are very wealthy are land rich and cash poor.

She inherited this 17th century castle. It didn't have good heat, she wanted to redo a lot of rooms and add bathrooms.

She sold some of the ruined farmhouses to renovate the castle. She met my architect at a cocktail party and said she was thinking about selling some property," Evans says.

She points to a photograph of the villa today, nestled into a hillside warmed by late afternoon sunlight.

"This is the vision I saw. I must have gone there four or five times before I decided to make the offer.

Because it was abandoned, you didn't need the keys or the agent to go in."

Evans wanted "rustic" — and she got it. After nearly six months to complete the sale, she was the owner of Fondo de Teglie — a dilapidated farmhouse, stable and two outbuildings.

While she was signing contracts and mortgage papers, pigs, sheep, chickens and rabbits were roaming both the first floor of the main house and the annex.

She laughs when reporting her father's reaction. "He said, 'You paid how much for a house that doesn't have plumbing or electricity?'"

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hile the villa was being gutted in early 2004, Evans was traveling between continents. Inducted into Georgia Tech's Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni in 2001, Evans directs business development in Europe and Africa for California-based Savi Networks, which markets technology to track containerized cargo from the port of origin to port of destination.

"The first day I arrived at the house after the construction began there were two giant cement trucks and all this construction equipment," Evans says. "I thought, 'Am I paying for all this?'"

While trying to grasp the actual construction process and costs involved, she also was trying to comprehend what was actually being said to her. "My architect speaks English. I wouldn't have done it otherwise," she says. "The first part of the con>»

struction I had no Italian. Then I took lessons. Now I'm pretty good."

Evans found herself biting her tongue when dealing with the man she hired to design her garden. She wanted concrete details. He could not express his creativity with pencil and paper.

"My architect is very much like me, very organized and methodical. My landscape designer was very artistic and non-methodical. The garden is beautiful and I love everything that he did, but it was stressful," Evans acknowledges.

Deadlines came and went as the months passed. Some deadlines were met. Others required flexibility. The first time Evans and friends stayed at the villa, there were no interior doors — or a kitchen. "It was pretty rough living," she says.

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mbria drew Evans' friends back. Lucky for her, many of her friends are skilled in trades that proved useful during the yearlong restoration.

"I had a lot of friends that I flew over on my frequent flier points," Evans says. Those friends included an interior designer, seamstress, carpenter and a photographer to snap pictures of finished rooms for a brochure and Web site, both designed by a graphic artist, who also happens to be one of her pals.

Throughout the wiring, plumbing, plastering and painting projects, Evans tried to retain as much of the 17th century house as she could. The kitchen is now big, airy and modern, but original stone and wood beams are still visible.

The annex, really more of a stable when Evans bought the property, was converted into a one-bedroom apartment with fully appointed kitchen to serve as her private quarters.

"I was able to use many of the original materials. Many of the floor tiles from the second floor in the main house were used in the apartment because they never had animals on them. Some of the floor tiles from downstairs I put on the windowsills on the outside of the house," she says.

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Her attention to detail has helped Evans balance her responsibilities with Savi Networks and her job managing the rental of the villa through a company she named 11 Gusto del Paese — a taste of the country (www.ilgustodelpaese.com).

Guests can dine al fresco around the original wood-burning oven,

Vision Complete "Even a bad day was a good day in Italy" for Susan Evans, who opened her restored villa to paying guests through the business she launched, II Gusto del Paese — a taste of the country.

lounge by the pool or wander the villa's six acres scattered with olive and cypress trees and a hedgerow of lavender. She is helped by three gardeners, two housekeepers and a cook, a local woman who was Evans' first — and only — recommendation. The cook awed Evans and her friends during an audition dinner that included fried sage and onions, mixed crostini and bruschetta, pasta made fresh on the premises and, for the meat course, tordo arrosto (roasted thrush).

During the appropriate seasons, guests can taste locally grown artichokes, pomodoros and figs and sample fried zucchini blossoms, a regional delicacy. Guests can cook for themselves if they prefer. Evans also has a local woman who will conduct cooking classes at Fondo de Teglie if desired.

Wine tastings can be arranged as well.

Visitors can stay connected to home via high-speed Internet access and satellite TV. Years of travel have taught Evans that the best hostesses provide bathrobes, hair dryers and flipflops. She can arrange car service from the airport in Rome two hours away,

provide suggested itineraries, hand out maps to Assisi an hour away and recommend restaurants in nearby Todi.

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he final deadline in the construction project came with the 2004 holiday season. Evans' family was coming for Christmas. The doors in her apartment were hung with care on Christmas Eve. As the new year dawned, Evans opened Fondo de Teglie for business.

"There are four bedrooms and four baths in the house. I typically say I can accommodate eight to 10 comfortably. I do have a loft that sleeps two children and I have a sofa bed. This summer I had six adults and five kids at one time," she says, noting that the villa is only booked to one group at a time, whether it's a party of two or 10.

"I have a lady who works with me.

She takes care of a lot of things for me when I'm away," Evans says. "Somebody was reading something about me and said, 'Basically you have two fulltime jobs.' People are shocked that I've done this. 'You're by yourself? You're single and you set up this business?'

"It's a business that can be run from multiple places. What I do now is marketing and selling. I have a lot of communication with guests before they even arrive," she says, explaining that while in Atlanta over the summer she had lunch with some prospective guests. "That makes a big difference — seeing the person you're renting from, knowing a little bit of the history. I try to provide more personal service. I think it assures people."

She notes that Fondo de Teglie was booked 15 weeks in 2005,22 this year, despite the fact that she does little advertising. Time seems to stand still in Umbria, but word spreads.

Evans is enjoying the Italian hospitality business so much that she is considering managing her architect's rental apartments and is looking at another villa in need of restoration.

"It's worse than mine was — and the roof is falling down," she says, smiling, undaunted. QT

Before & After In the column at left are photos of what Susan Evans found when she bought her 17th century Italian villa.

In this and the right column, her restored villa today

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Dancing With Wood Longtime community leader Sam Williams steps into role as dedicated hobbyist

By Virginia Anderson

Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and longtime deal maker in the local business scene, needed a new challenge.

It wasn't enough that Williams, EE 68, had been a partner with architect and developer John Portman for 21 years or head of Central Atlanta Progress during the downtown revitalization prior to the 1996 Summer Olympics. He also had earned an MBA from Harvard, worked for Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen and helped raise two daughters, Stephanie and Lindsay.

Williams needed something new to put his mind to, a niche to carve out for himself in his mid50s. And so the Obion, Tenn., native returned to an earlier passion, but with a twist â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and a few turns.

"I'd learned carpentry from my father and about six years ago I became intensely interested in bowl turning," says Williams, who took classes at Highland Hardware in Atlanta. The hobby has since grown on him so much that he converted his garage into a studio adorned with a sign that reads "Sam's Studio: Dances With Wood."

Craftsmen who practice wood turning may use as many as 20 different kinds of chisels and various lathes to fashion not only bowls but platters, plates and even thimble-size Christmas ornaments.

engineering, craftsman sort of thing," Williams says. "You spend three or four years learning that and then you start pursuing a style and an art and form."

When Williams became concerned that his bowls were boring, he found a mentor, famed wood turner Nick Cook of Marietta, Ga., to help him improve his technique.

"He said you have to dance with the wood, you have to rhythmically move your arm and your body," Williams says. "It's about understanding the nature of the wood, the habit of the wood."

In addition to learning about the ways different chisels can affect a piece of wood, Williams also loves to learn about the intrinsic nature of different kinds of wood, he says.

Williams says his fascination with bowl turning came from his instinctive interest in the mechanics of the process. Then his interest broadened into concern over style.

Most wood spalts after a tree dies, Williams explains. Spalting is the process that occurs when chemicals seep prior to the decaying process. The spalting results in beautiful lines along a piece of wood. The design and the color will vary from wood to wood and from piece to piece.

"It starts out being sort of an

Williams particularly likes the

wood of a box elder, he says, but he also enjoys working with maple, oak and cherry. He has created hundreds of bowls and other pieces of wood art, including one piece that fetched $1,300 at auction for the Olmstead Park Association.

Finding the perfect piece of wood is key. "If you drive around, you won't believe what you see in people's yards after a storm," he says.

Williams, who never dreamed as a Tennessee farm boy that he could go to Georgia Tech, credits his alma mater with teaching him habits that have helped with his bowl turning, his career as a successful community leader and life.

"Tech taught me how to think and how to work hard. It taught me discipline and endurance," says Williams, adding that graduate work at Harvard was easy after his undergraduate education at the Institute.

Tech brought him lifelong

friendships, including one with his roommate, Harold Reheis, retired director of Georgia's Environmental Protection Division, and provided a forum for his growing interest in politics.

Active in student government, Williams landed a job as assistant to Mayor Allen, Com 33, soon after graduation.

Williams recalls arriving on campus and having a dean look at his academic record from high school.

"He said, 'Young man, there's been a terrible mistake,'" Williams says. "I said, 'Yes, I know, I'm going to need to work on that D I got in physics.' He said, 'No, son, it's not just that D, it's your whole transcript. The best thing for you to do is to go home.'

"It scared me to death, but it also steeled me," Williams recalls. "I was determined I was going to make it through. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life." G T

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CHEAP OIL IS HISTORY The volatile energy market — mirrored by the daily ups and downs at the gas pump — has sparked Georgia Tech research initiatives digging for innovative technologies that would lessen the nation's reliance on petroleum, especially in transportation.

By Gary Goettling

# Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall

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conomy and efficiency. Those two words have long defined the objectives of Georgia Tech research. They have never been more evident or more important as they guide the spectrum of research activities related to the conservation of energy and the development of new energy sources.

At Georgia Tech's Strategic Energy Institute, researchers study new and innovative energy technologies in the transportation, building, manufacturing and electric-power sectors. SEI projects include feasibility studies of electricity-generating windmills off the Georgia coast; improved wind turbine design; cooling, heating and power systems that reduce emissions and conserve fossil fuels by utilizing waste heat; and the production of ethanol from wood.

Additional energy-related research is conducted through the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development. Areas of activity include fuel cells, new battery materials and technologies, coal gasification, hydrogen-powered transportation and wind turbines.

The University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics conducts several projects designed to raise the efficiency of solar cells while reducing their cost. Researchers' interests at the Center for Innovative Fuel Cell and Battery Technologies include hybrid power systems, rapid-charging batteries and fuel cells.

Each of these research areas carries the potential and the goal of broadening energy sources and lessening our reliance on petroleum, especially in the transportation sector. The gas purnj is a daily — sometimes hourly — window to the upk and downs of a volatile energy market. That volatility has a lot of people nervous — and many others looking for answers. >»

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006 SMBMWH

The View from the Peak

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ou won't find Hubbert's Peak on a map, but it towers over the world's economic landscape. Rather than a geological landmark, the peak represents the point at which half of the world's recoverable oil reserves have been exhausted and production reaches its physical maximum.

This past summer Marilyn Brown attended a meeting of the National Resources Defense Council, at which discussion topics included Hubbert's calculations.

"I think people have some faith in Hubbert's analysis, but there is disagreement about where we are," says Brown, a professor in the School of Public Policy who teaches a course on energy technology and public policy. She came to Tech in August from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she was director of its Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program.

"There are those who say "There are those who say we will keep we will keep finding oil as long as we're looking for it, and finding oil as long as we're looking for it through advances in technology and... we will continue to grow our and the use of what they call reserves," says Marilyn Brown. 'unconventional petroleum/ we will continue to grow our "And then there's the rest of us, who think reserves. And then there's the we're reaching the peak." rest of us, who think we're reaching the peak," she says.

M. King Hubbert was a Shell Oil geophysicist who in 1956 applied to oil a well-known technique for describing consumption of other natural resources. In basic terms he

SCALING THE PEAK

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall

plotted global oil production volume over time and used that upward slope as a guide to configure a bell-shaped area representing the world's total known oil reserves. By extrapolating the historical production data to the top of the bell, Hubbert could predict the approximate time when oil production would peak, followed by a steady decline.

The ambiguity in Hubbert's formula, Brown says, rests with the estimate of oil reserves. Hubbert was talking about light sweet crude — the purest, easiest kind of oil to pump and the grade refineries are designed to process. But as the price of oil increases, it becomes economical for companies to extract "unconventional" supplies that are harder to reach or of lesser quality.

Thus the supply increases, pushing Hubbert's peak further into the future. The per-barrel cost of oil spikes too and with it, the cost of everything that uses petroleum in one form or another — which is to say, just about everything.

There are few major oil fields left to discover on the planet, "but there are the oil shale and tar sands options," Brown points out. "That's what people are turning to now, thinking that they represent the next Saudi Arabia of oil.

Shell and other oil companies are putting a lot of money into projects out in Alberta, Canada, and in the American West."

Whether or not unconventional sources can keep up with increasing demand is questionable, but it's a safe bet to say that the era of cheap oil is over. Add environmental priorities, refinery vulnerability to natural disasters and the potential for political transilience among major oil producers and the U.S. reliance on petroleum looks increasingly like a juggernaut.

Loosening Reliance on Oi

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et all the news isn't bad. Counterintuitive as it seems, the economy is less dependent on oil than it was 30 years ago, according to Brown. Energy intensity is a macroeconomic measure of energy efficiency — how much energy is required to produce one unit of gross domestic product.

"The economy's energy intensity has been declining by 1.5 percent to 1.8 percent a year for a long time," she says, pointing out that high fuel costs of the past year or so have not swamped consumer prices the way they did in the late 70s. "The economy is less at the mercy of oil prices, which is good."

One factor responsible for the change is the shift away from energy-intensive blue-collar industries to a service economy. Another is a general rise in energy efficiency, from improved building construction to more-efficient household appliances, she says. >»

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but there's no real impetus to implement the technologies The U.S. economy's transportation sector offers a clear we already have that could lessen our dependence on oil." contrast between progress and problems in the development of energy efficiency, conservation and alternative Any public policy initiative, she cautions, has to be power. weighed against political reality. "We can look at what policies have been near misses — the push for ethanol back in Transportation accounts for the largest share of oil conthe 1970s, for instance — and figure out why they failed and sumption — 67 percent, according to the U.S. Department in what set of circumstances they can be implemented. of Energy. And while automobiles are vastly more fuel-effiThen, when energy panic sets in a few months or years or cient than their 1970s predecessors, the gains largely have decades from now, we have the solutions in hand." been offset by increases in the number of miles traveled each year, according to Brown.

She would like to see the sedan Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard raised to 37.5 miles per gallon over 10 years and believes Congress is receptive to the idea. "There is a growing sense of urgency in the country that didn't rt Ragauskas isn't waiting. An expert in wood exist several years ago, mostly because of gasoline prices." chemistry and a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, he is the Georgia Tech That sense of urgency is shared by Jill Adams, ME 05, a team leader in a collaborative effort with the Imperial graduate student at Tech who has studied the interplay ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ College of London and Oak between public policy and oil dependence.

Ridge National Laboratory in Knoxville, Tenn., to develop "There's growing interest practical, commercial processes in conservation and alternative for converting biomaterials into technologies to lessen our Art Ragauskas, working with graduate biofuels. dependence on fossil fuels," student Suteera Witayabran, envisions Adams says. But changes in The Tech group is focused biorefineries that produce a variety of public policy aren't happening on "finding an area where we'd fast. Government is reactive, have a significant impact," says cellulosic fuels and chemical products. not proactive, she observes.

Ragauskas, who came to the faculty from the Institute of In addition to raising CAFE Paper Science and Technology standards, she advocates exwhen it became part of Tech in 2003. "In the spectrum > » panding tax credits for new transportation and energy technologies, arguing that "you've got people in universities and the national laboratories working on the 'next big thing,'

Finding the Right Enzymes

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INNOVATIVE BIOMASS

A Win-Win Problem The economics of wood-to-ethanol techniques is an issue that some see as a problem. ,

In particular, the weight and bulkiness of wood pulp makes

transporting the raw material to distant biorefineries financially prohibitive. Another challenge specific to ethanol no matter where it comes from is that it tends to pick up water easily, so piping the fuel long distances will require special technologies.

While some see the problem, Art Ragauskas, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, sees a bright side.

"I'm not an economist," he cautions, "but it's clear that the processing plants will have to be located in rural areas close to the raw biomass resources. That's a good thing because they bring economic development to places that need them and help Georgia's wood and pulp industry, which has been in decline for several years. To me it's a real big win-win-win situation."

50

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

of biofuels, bioethanol seems to be the most promising Ford Explorer, was retired to an off-campus garage two growth area." years ago.

But if Jerome "Jerry" Meisel gets his wish, further The choice of wood and forest waste as ethanol sources hybrid development and experimentation at Tech will pick was logical because both are plentiful in Georgia and they up where they left off. "utilize our existing expertise in wood chemistry and process engineering," adds Ragauskas. "In reality, it's basiA professor of electrical and computer engineering and cally a chemical-processing procedure." faculty adviser to the Tech FutureTruck team, Meisel is trying to obtain funding to engineer the Explorer into what he Ragauskas contends that deriving ethanol from the conconsiders the next step in hybrid evolution: the plug-in stituents of wood — cellulose and hemicellulose, hence the hybrid. distinction "cellulosic ethanol" — is at least four times more energy efficient than distilling corn. In addition, bioengiIntroduced into the United States in 2000, today's neering certain fast-growing species such as pine, willow hybrids mainly use their electric motors for acceleration and and poplar to produce denser biomass could promote effistop-and-go travel, when an internal combustion engine is ciency and production volume further. least efficient, and automatically switch to their gasolinepowered engines for higher, steady-speed driving, when Ragauskas envisions biorefineries that function similar those systems operate most efficiently, according to Meisel. to oil refineries and produce a variety of cellulosic fuels and organic chemical products from The batteries running the elecwood, crop wastes and other tric power train are recharged cellulosic biomass. The facilities by the car's braking action and would operate with innovative by the gas engine, with the elecbiomass conversion processes tric motor acting as a generator.

In the early 2000s, Tech students retrofitted that form the mainstay of the There is no facility for rechargSUVs with experimental hybrid engines Georgia Tech research effort: ing the batteries from the elecfor an auto-sponsored competition. Professor that is the process of liberating tric power grid. The hybrid also cellulose from wood and consaves gas by shutting down the jerry Meisel champions continued work verting it into fermentable engine during prolonged stops on hybrid-engine development. sugars. and while coasting.

Hybrids are widely touted "Right now we have to preas gas savers. Toyota's 2007 Camry hybrid is rated by the heat the wood to open up the structure to allow enzymes in EPA at 40 mpg city and 38 mpg highway, compared to 24 the second stage to more aggressively attack the biomass city and 33 highway for the non-hybrid chemicals and biopolymers," Ragauskas explains. "The standard, four-cylinder model. But the enzymes aren't as efficient as we'd like. You have to use actual miles per gallon any particular higher enzyme dosages in what's called the depolymerizahybrid vehicle gets is a function of the tion of cellulose or hemicellulose to break them down into type of driving involved. City drivers monomeric sugars. And there are also some inhibition reacbenefit because the electric motor tions that hurt you during the fermentation process." does most of the work in stop-and-go Fixing these chemical-enzymatic reactions to break urban traffic, assuming the down wood pulp faster, more efficiently and at a lower cost battery energy does not might seem like a daunting task, but Ragauskas is optireach too low a mistic. "If you look at how far we've come in these fields, if charge level. Rural we keep applying the rigors of science these issues can be and suburban drivers readily solved." see much smaller savings since the gas engine still provides most of the propulsion in steady-drive situa' thanol could dramatically decrease U.S. oil consumptions. tion when paired with another innovation: hybrid

HYBRID HAVEN

The Next Generation of Hybrids

I cars. Georgia Tech students designed and equipped a stock vehicle with a hybrid power train for a FutureTruck competition held during 2000-04. Their last entry, a 2002

52

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

Plug-in hybrids enable drivers to recharge the car's batteries by > »

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

53

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connecting them to a standard 110- or 220-volt electrical outlet, in effect allowing drivers to maximize the amount of time spent driving in a predominantly electric mode. This option could be especially useful for drivers whose roundtrip daily commutes fall within the typical plug-in hybrid's electric-power range of about 40 miles. If battery power gets too low, the gasoline engine would still kick in like a regular hybrid.

"The plug-in hybrid will not operate on one source or the other," Meisel says. "The engine torque and electric motor torque must be blended in an optimal way to minimize gasoline consumption and yet provide the expected drivability. It's a tricky open problem that will only be solved by adjusting control algorithms on an actual research vehicle. That is why I want to continue with work on a plug-in design with our Explorer."

Electric-only operation produces zero emissions from the vehicle, but the utility providing the electricity may still produce greenhouse gases and With the U.S. economy built on the other pollutants, depending on availability of cheap oil, Americans face how their power plants genersignificant challenges. Student ]ill ate electric power, he adds.

"However, these pollutants Adams rides her bike. Alumnus Robert would be about 50 percent of Frank wants to hike the cost of gas. what automobiles are producing," Meisel notes. "Also, the pollutants are centralized at the power plants and therefore may more easily be controlled."

Interestingly, Prius and other hybrid models sold in Europe and Japan come with an EV switch that allows drivers to choose between standard hybrid or electric-only operation, although range in the latter mode is only about five miles.

"With a normal hybrid you can get about 20 percent or 25 percent improvement in fuel economy with normal driving, not the EPA test," Meisel says. "If you could plug it in every night, with our Explorer I believe we could get about 60 miles out of every gallon of gasoline by substituting grid-supplied electric energy for gasoline. Even considering the present cost of electricity, this trade-off of energy supply is equivalent to buying gasoline at about 66 cents a gallon."

Substitute a gasoline-ethanol mix for regular unleaded in the tank and the potential miles per gallon skyrockets by a factor of six — to 360 miles per gallon of gasoline, Meisel says. "There's no infrastructure for ethanol distribution on a national basis," he adds, "but if one comes along, we can have plug-ins running on ethanol — and we'd have no imported oil problem at all." GT

THE PRICE OF CHANGE

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

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On the Pay-As-We-Go Plan ^

• n ^ h e problem with gasoline prices is not that they're too high but that they're not high enough, says The New York Times contributing columnist and alumnus Robert H. Frank.

Frank, Math 66, the Henrietta Johnson Louis professor of management and professor of economics at Cornell University, advocates phasing in a $2-per-gallon gasoline tax as a way of addressing problems created or aggravated by the nation's prodigious consumption of fossil fuel,

historical patterns of fuel consumption by industry and company size. Phasing in the tax over several years would soften its impact on low-income drivers, he says.

Conceding that "the devil is in the details," the point of the tax is not to raise money but change behavior, he explains.

Frank first described his idea earlier this year in the monthly column "Economic Scene" in The New York Times.

"Motorists don't take into account all the additional costs associated with a ^ ^ : gallon of gasoline," he says, citing air C*L "*•*- - * _ pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic congestion and the political con_ sequences of America's reliance on ^ ^ f Middle East oil. r^BB^I BBHPV "If the price of gas were twice what \ it is now, it would immediately create T 1 incentives for people to solve all those problems in the cheapest ways they can k find. If solar-powered cars turn out to be J^B Ki M the cheapest solution, people will fig| V -*• .*»», B ure that out."

B Jill Adams, ME 05, a graduate • •T*^HB>M>HHMHHH^^ Va«r ^ B student at Tech who has studied the interplay between public policy •r .

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Frank's tax increase echoes a plan advanced in 1979 by the Carter administration on the heels of two oil embargoes. The plan failed, according to Frank, after critics claimed that there would be no incentive to purchase less gasoline because the extra tax would be refunded. He estimates that a higher tax would curb gasoline consumption by 15 percent in the short run and 60 percent over the long term.

"From the experience of the 1970s, we know that consumers respond to higher gasoline prices not just by buying more efficient cars, but also by taking fewer trips, forming car pools and moving closer to work.

"Another good thing about the tax is that it provides an incentive for private actors in the marketplace to take action," Frank says, thus intensifying the push to bring new fuel-efficient technologies to market.

Government can play an additional role too by offering research grants for new technology research and development, but too much government involvement can lead to questionable decisions, he adds. Federal backing for ethanol production research and development is one example, Frank says.

"For the same amount of money spent, you could save way more gallons of oil by making the internal combustion engine more efficient, which people would do in a heartbeat if gas were $6 a gallon rather than $3 a gallon." — Gary Goettling

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—

Fueling Entrepreneurship

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ower gas prices don't worry Roger Reisert, ME 75.

Flex-fuel engines run on a gasoline mix consisting of He knows the era of cheap oil is over and that "we 85 percent ethanoi, known as E85. Most U.S. carmakers need to do something." And last year he did, foundhave offered a flex-fuel option for certain models the past ing C2 Biofuels in Marietta, Ga., to commercialize a few years, but retail outlets of E85 are limited to a relative process for distilling cellulosic ethanoi — biofuel produced handful in corn-producing states. from the woody parts of plants.

Still, ethanoi appears to many to offer advantages "None of this made sense when crude oil was at $30 for a near-term relaxation of petroleum's grip on America a barrel," he explains. "When I thought oil would stay at and the environmental costs associated with it. $40 or above, that's when I thought production of ethanoi According to Argonne National Laboratory, a 90-10 from wood was economically plausible." gas-ethanol mix reduces greenhouse gas emissions by While corn is the crop of choice for ethanoi producers up to 19 percent compared with conventional gasoline. in the Midwest, pine trees make In fact, the Department of sense in Georgia because they Energy has established a are renewable and readily availgoal of meeting 30 percent able. "The market for pine trees is of the country's transportareally distressed," he explains. tion fuel needs — based on Ethanoi from pulp would be a boon "Middle and south Georgia are 2004 consumption levels — loaded with tree owners who are with biofuels by the year to Georgia. Pine forests could be cut to really hurting for a better market 2025. fuel refineries, creating jobs and for their trees."

Reisert's background Reisert believes the state includes work in the oil, gas income for farmers. Alumnus Roger could support at least 10 bioand chemicals industries in Reisert wants to make it happen. ethanol production refineries with which he "helped design, an annual output of 50 million build, start up and optimize gallons each. big processing plants like what a cellulosic ethanoi plant would be," he says, "Once we prove what we believe is the best process in the laboratory, we plan to build a pilot facility," he says, "So I have a good feel for what were getting into "then build a demonstration plant which would prove the here." — Gary Goettling process commercially."

For the research part of the venture, Reisert contracted with Georgia Tech to enable him to draw upon the technical expertise and resources of a science team that includes Art Ragauskas, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and an expert in wood chemistry. The group also includes Sam Shelton, ME 61, PhD 69, and Bill Bulpitt, ME 70, MS ME 72, of the Strategic Energy Institute and scientists at Tech's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as well as researchers at the University of Georgia.

CASH CROP

If all goes according to plan, Reisert's venture could have enormous implications for the level of oil consumption in the United States.

Automobiles built after 1980 can run on a 10 percent ethanoi, 90 percent gasoline mix with no modifications. If that option was standard at each of the country's 167,000 filling stations, just over 38 million gallons of gas would be saved every day — 10 percent of the 383.3 million gallons of gasoline the U.S. Department of Energy estimates are burned every day in this country.

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

> >PACESETTERS

Track Teams Need for speed has pit crew hopefuls, corporate employees racing to class

By Neil B. McGahee If you have ever watched a NASCAR race, you've seen the precision of the finely tuned pit crews armed with hydraulic jacks, pneumatic wrenches and racing tires that swarm over the car before it comes to a complete stop. A jack is wedged under the 3,400-pound car, lug nuts fly and 80-pound tires are jammed onto the wheel hubs. The tires are changed, the fuel tank is filled and the car is back on the track in less than 15 seconds.

"It's teamwork at its very best," says Tom DeLoach, ChE 69, co-founder of Pit Instruction and Training LLC, a training facility for would-be tire changers and jack men.

DeLoach, retired CFO of Mobil Corp. and a consultant for Roger Penske's racing team, and Jeff Hammond, a former NASCAR pit crew chief now a Fox Sports racing analyst, teamed up in 2002 to create Pit Crew U, a motor sports boot camp devoted to training and producing pit crewmen for NASCAR racing. And there's no shortage of recruits.

"They're chasing a dream," DeLoach says. "They all want to get into NASCAR racing, so for about $2,400, we offer an eightweek session at our facilities and teach them everything it takes to work in a Nextel Cup pit crew," PIT'S 24,000-square-foot facility is located in Mooresville, N.C., a suburb of Charlotte that calls itself "Race City USA," an appropriate moniker since almost all NASCAR teams are headquartered there.

"Pit Crew U is just one part of PIT," DeLoach says. "We also offer the Performance Training Institute

58

that addresses the athletic development of pit crews and the 5 Off, 5 On Race Team, which provides advanced coaching and placement."

Pit Crew U is the company's teaching division. Students are taught to work every position in a seven-man crew plus learn NASCAR regulations and safety procedures.

"Jeff and I realized that racing teams were no longer wanting to hire a mechanic who was somewhat athletic and could jump over the wall," DeLoach says. "In the old days, you might work on the engine all night, then crew the next day. Nowadays, the engines come directly from the factory or the engine builder. The crews don't touch the motor. Only two skills are desired — athleticism and the ability to weld.

"We teach them the fundamentals, not speed," DeLoach says. "The more you repeat the fundamentals, the faster you will be. We tell them, 'You need to go slow to be fast.' In other words, you need to slow down to be efficient."

DeLoach says about twothirds of the students are invited to enroll in the 5 Off, 5 On team after they finish the basic course.

"At that point, we basically become a clearinghouse for pit crewmen," he says. "A team will call and ask if we have available students and we try to fill the order with the most experienced we have. The students need the practical experience and the team calling probably doesn't have a lot of money so everyone gains."

After the first year, DeLoach and Hammond realized the

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

demand for pit crews was somewhat limited. They were pondering their options when United Airlines called.

"United said, 'We're coming out of bankruptcy, we have no cash flow and we can't buy new airplanes,'" DeLoach says. "They said they needed to find a way to get more seat miles — that's the time the plane is in the air, They figured if they could shave four or five minutes off their ground time, they could add more than 100 flights daily without having to buy new planes.

"That sounded very familiar to me. The skill set needed for a pit stop — organization, flexibility and speed — is the same skill set needed to service an airplane. We just developed scenarios on pit road that mimic the same situations found in airports."

To date, more than 1,200 United employees have participated in three-day workshops. Their on-time performance is already establishing new company records, DeLoach says.

Word of United's success spread quickly and other companies, including Best Buy, Cisco Systems, Comcast and Ford, signed on.

"They leave the work world behind for a couple of days and instead of climbing a rope course or rafting down the Colorado, they get to work in a program that uses the same techniques that are applied on pit road," DeLoach says. "It's a unique experience and they take those team-building skills back to their corporation. If you are looking for ultimate teamwork and efficiency, this is what you want." G T

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

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Georgia Tech's president embarks on a sea-based, modern-day journey into a history that began in 5000 B.C.

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he Celts emerged from the mists of history around 5000 B.C. and gradually created formidable tribes that lived in the dense woodlands and plied the rough seas that form what we know today as parts of England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland and the regions of Brittany and Normandy in northern France. The Celts thrived, created an organized religion with their Druid priests and rose to power as a people a millennium before Christ was bom.

We know little of them because theirs was an oral tradition. We see them in Roman history in 50 B.C. as the Gauls through the eyes of Caesar. Rome conquers them and invades England, Wales and parts of Scotland. With the beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire, the armies withdraw, leaving behind a network of roads and Christianity as the dominant religion. > Âť

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

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The beaches and battlefields of the D-Day landings along the hallowed ground off the Normandy coast allow us to understand the significance of the events that took place on this land where courageous soldiers were locked in a mighty struggle with Nazi Germany to secure freedom for our nation and our allies.

62

The vacuum left by the Romans is quickly filled by invading Anglo-Saxon tribes from Germany driving down through Scotland. It is at this time that King Arthur of Celtic legend probably lived as he attempted to rally his people from his base in Cornwall to fight the new invaders from the north and create an independent Celtic republic.

In the end, even Arthur's heroic efforts were not successful and the Celts of England were subjugated by another invading force.

In spite of the effects of the invasions by the Romans and Germans and subsequently those of the Vikings and the Normans, the Celts had a remarkable staying power as a cultural force. Even though much of their history was not even written down, their contributions remain strong in the myths, religion, history and traditions that form our modern society. Indeed, there is a Celtic renaissance under way today as the culture is revisited and appreciated anew.

I am descended from these people on my father's side. I know this from my dermatologist, who warns me that my Celtic complexion and blue eyes cause me to be subject to negative effects of sunburn. More directly, my family name, Clough,

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

is believed to derive from a term related to those Celts who lived in and around the cliffs of Brittany in France.

Clough is a Welsh name (pronounced Cluff), and to this day, many Cloughs live in Wales, although my forebearers immigrated to America and to what was to become Massachusetts in 1635.

My wife, Anne, is a Burke on her mother's side, and her grandparents were Irish, so she shares with me the Celtic lineage.

An Alumni Association-sponsored Celtic lands tour gives Anne and me the opportunity to visit some of the places where our ancestors spent their lives and to see the historic locations we have heard so much about. This is to be a sea-based adventure, appropriate since the Celts were accustomed to coastal travel by water.

Our well-appointed base, the M.S. Le Diamant, a cruise ship with 133 cabins, affords an abundantly comfortable moving hotel. We are joined on the tour by 18 stalwart Georgia Tech alumni and friends, along with 150 or so folks affiliated with other universities and affinity groups.

The tour is sold out, a sign of the growing interest in Celtic culture.

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town where an outsized floating port was created in less than two weeks to supply the needed equipment, fuel and food for the mighty armies fighting to secure the land needed to support the advances into enemy territory. As we are served a helping of lectures about the creation of this remarkable port, the eyes of some of my fellow passengers seem to glaze over, but to this civil engineer, nothing could be more exciting. >»

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anding in Paris, we are immediately whisked to the French city of Rouen, where we board the Diamant and settle into our cabins. After a gracious dinner, it does not take long to fall into a deep sleep from the effects of jet lag. Overnight the ship takes us to Caen, France, for its proximity to the beaches and battlefields of the D-Day landings along the Normandy coast.

While the Allied troops were confronted with rain, fog and high seas and faced deadly peril, we experience a sunny day in the high 70s in the now peaceful and alluring French countryside.

Monuments and remnants of the battlefield allow *J us to understand the significance of the events that j j took place on this hallowed land. But the enormity of the sacrifice made is brought home by a visit to the hauntingly beautiful American Military Cemetery at St. Laurent overlooking the English Channel. Here 9,300 marble crosses mark the graves of U.S. soldiers who gave their lives.

In the afternoon we visit Arromanches, a small

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

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A Day in 'Little Britain'

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ur ship moves us overnight to the old port city of St. Malo in Brittany. St. Malo's Christian origins date back to the founding by Welsh monk MacLow of a bishopric in the sixth century. St. Malo served as refuge for the Celts fleeing England's invading Anglo-Saxons. In the 12th century it became a walled and prosperous city with its own armed forces that eventually pledged allegiance to France. The prevalence of Celts who immigrated from Great Britain led to the region being called Brittany or "little Britain."

Among the many historic sites the most famous and dramatic is the abbey of Mont St. Michel. Built on a rock island in a bay known for its 20- to 30-foot tidal changes, the abbey looms above the countryside. As early as 708 the island became a site for religious pilgrimages and in time buildings developed, evolving from modest origins to one of the world's most magnificent religious monuments. Succeeding generations built on to the works of those before them with architecture reflecting new styles and technology. Because of the lack of land, the abbey grew vertically, not horizontally, calling for an ingenuity not seen in other famous abbeys and cathedrals.

The history of Mont St. Michel is as storied as its architecture, involving a succession of supportive patrons, including dukes of Normandy and kings of France, as well as those who sought to destroy or damage it, among them English

invaders and the leaders of the French Revolution.

For a period, especially during the French Revolution, it was used as a fearsome prison, and some frescoes and artworks were damaged or destroyed.

Beginning in the late 1800s, it was recognized as a treasure, and the state of France assumed responsibility for restoration and maintenance.

Today it has been designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Our visit comes on a glorious day with plenteous sunshine and cool temperatures. A visit to St. Michel brings exercise, because you have to climb well-worn stone stairs one by one to reach the top.

Views of the bay and the chance to stand in hushed wonder in the remarkable refectories prepared for worship are worth the effort. A meditation garden lies adjacent to the gothic cathedral; its ethereal presence unexpected so high in the air, it seems suspended in time. The garden is bounded by a rectangular covered walkway that has an open side framed by numerous small arches, each supported by delicate rose granite columns. These are staggered one by one so that a repeating pattern is created that is at once pleasing to the eye and at the same time evocative of geometric rigor.

High atop the Mont St. Michel abbey is the magnificent gothic cathedral with its stained glass windows glowing in the sunlight, providing sweeping views of the bay. Capping the cathedral is an ornate steeple guardedfromabove by a gilded statue of the archangel St. Michael with his sword unsheathed, ready to strike.

Too soon we make our descent back to the bus, but the return is rich with insight as our route proceeds down spiral staircases through successive levels, each serving the needs of the abbey in differing ways. Descending level by level, we see the architecture change and age, reflecting earlier centuries of work until at last we exit and the rock of the island appears under the works of man. > Âť

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

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/.ong known for the pastoral beauty of its countryside, today Ireland has a growing population and one of the strongest economies in Europe based on an influx of global high-technology companies, particularly from the United States.

66

To the Land of King Arthur

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he ship crosses the English Channel to Fowey, a quaint port city on the south of Cornwall, which lays at the heart of Celtic country in England. Bounded on the north by the Irish Sea and south by the English Channel, it served as a key link in the "Saints Way," a passage beginning in Ireland that led the faithful for centuries across Cornwall on pilgrimages to Rome.

In legend and likely in history, Cornwall also is home to King Arthur and his knights. We are treated to several lectures by experts who examine Arthurian history and legend. Although there is debate about this, the predominant evidence

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

points to Tintagel in north Cornwall as his birthplace, and it is believed Camelot was located at Cadbury Castle in the middle of Cornwall.

Historical records suggest Arthur lived around 550 and likely served as an officer in the Roman army in his early life, learning the arts of organized battle and war in the process. He assumed his role as a leader of the Celtic tribes as the Romans withdrew and fought the advancing Anglo-Saxons so that a free Celtic republic could be created.

We learn it is hard to separate fact from fiction about King Arthur. He is mentioned in a number of historical references from 550 to 1100, but his reputation began to grow as the Normans invaded England and Norman writers viewed him as a hero. The flourishing of the Arthurian legend comes with the publication of "Le Morte

D'Arthur" by Sir Thomas Malory in 1469.

Fowey is all you might expect in a picturesque port town. At the center stands the Fowey Parish Church, with a tower that rises above the town, crowned by a golden weather vane sporting a large salmon, a fish native to these waters. Parts of the church date back to 500, when Christian priests were expanding their influence as the Romans withdrew.

A bus takes us along roads often too narrow for two vehicles, causing one to choose to either stop and reverse or to lay close to the vegetation that hugs the sides of the road. Valerian, with its puffy cone-shaped flowers in soft pink hues, graces hillsides and fields. The view in the distance is of green and verdant fields crisscrossed by hedgerows.

Arriving on the entry roads to the Pencarrow estate we are treated to the riotous blooms of dozens of varieties of rhododendrons. Not native to the area, the imported plants are thriving to the point of driving out other species to the concern of the local naturalists.

The estate has been in the hands of the same family since the 1500s, including the present residents. It is a handsome Georgian edifice surrounded by elegant gardens and contains valuable antiques and artifacts. For all of its impressive history, today it survives because of folks like us who pay to see it. Repairs go undone in some cases for want of funding. The good news is that local residents have taken up the cause and work as docents to help in the historic preservation.

The Emerald Isle

I

reland is a country with a long history founded on Celtic legends and traditions. The Irish argue that for several thousand years while the rest of Europe was occupied by peoples who painted themselves blue and lived brutish lives, the Celts of this island were culturally advanced and celebrated religion under the guidance of the Druid priesthood.

The native tongue is Gaelic, a language now celebrated but, until Irish independence in 1922, outlawed by the English government. On most public signs the words are listed in Gaelic along with English. In many cases, the English translation is a phonetic one. Thus, the town of Ros Lair becomes Rosslare in English, and Corcaigh (pronounced Corkie) becomes Cork.

The trials of Ireland are well documented in our literature. Conquered by the Vikings in 900 to 1000, the country was eventually dominated by the English. In the time of Henry VIII, the issue of religion split England from Rome and Protestants from Catholics. Rome's influence and that of the Catholic Church in Ireland created a tension with England that spilled over into state relations.

English lords displaced the Irish from their lands while suppressing the Irish culture, including outlawing the Irish language and the Catholic Church.

Ultimately this proved ruinous to the Irish people who were confined to small areas of >Âť

We line up to view a few of the intricately decorated pages from the remarkable Book of Kelts, which helped save Christianity after the Romans left England. Today it is literally hard to conceive the effort and artistry it took to create this masterpiece. Remarkably, the Book of Keifs was almost lost to history in the early days when it fell into the hands of Viking invaders who were only interested in their prize for the gold of the book binding.

They threw the pages away in a peat bog. These were thankfully later found and restored.

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Deep in this mountain range in Wales, with sunlight filtering through the tall fir trees and the cool air, we stop for a mountain inn lunch and a pint of good Welsh beer. We are then treated to a delightful performance by a Welsh men's choir, a carryover from the long tradition of male singing groups in Wales.

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land that depended almost solely on the production of the potato for their food supply. They suffered tremendously from the famine when the potato crop failed.

At one time the country supported upward of 8 million people, but at the time of the famine, 1 million died of starvation and malnutrition.

Millions more left the country to seek a better life, many in the United States. Today the population of Ireland is 4 million people, less than half the population of the state of Georgia and smaller than that of metro Atlanta.

In the early 20th century nationalism was on the rise in Ireland and the people fought for, and ultimately earned, independence from England in 1922. But in the new state the Catholic Church was given so much prominence as to create essentially a theocracy. Literature was censored and books like those of the great Irish author James Joyce were suppressed. It was not until the 1960s that the present state of Ireland emerged.

Because of the history of the country, the economic conditions in Ireland in the 1960s and 70s were so inferior that the nation was known as the "poor man of Europe." Following the implementation of enlightened economic and cultural policies and joining the European Union, Ireland has since emerged as an economic power and is now known as the "Celtic tiger."

Our ship glides up the River Lee to the center of Cork, a vibrant city of some 200,000 people, with the main economic base in its port. Being a seaside city, Cork was invaded by succeeding groups of seafaring nations, including the Vikings and the Normans, before the English arrived.

We visit the port of Cobh, which served as the embarkation point for great ocean liners, including

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

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the Titantic, as well as for lesser ships that carried hundreds of thousands of Irish from a life of deprivation and hunger to a new beginning in another land. Many did not make it to their destination because of the disgraceful conditions on board many of the transit ships, the worst of which were called "coffin ships."

Among those who chose to leave Ireland from Cobh was 14-year-old Annie Moore, who boarded a ship bound for the United States with her two younger brothers. Annie and her brothers were the first people processed through Ellis Island in New York City. A poignant statue of Annie and her brothers stands in Cobh, and an identical statue is located on Ellis Island.

Dublin (Baile Atha Cliath) is much larger than Cork with 1.2 million people and a thriving metropolis with construction much in evidence. Young people abound and the streets are filled with shoppers. In the city center is the famed Trinity College with a campus of only 40 acres. Famous graduates include the authors Samuel Beckett, William Butler Yeats and Joyce.

On campus we visit the celebrated library, a repository for a vast collection of historic books, including several chapters of the Book of Kells.

We also visit the Writer's Museum, which celebrates Ireland's rich history in literature. Four

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Irish authors have won the Nobel Prize — Beckett, Yeats, Seamus Heaney and George Bernard Shaw.

The oversight in this is Joyce, perhaps one of the greatest writers in history, whose writings were perhaps too controversial in his time to bring the recognition deserved.

Back on the ship, we meet on the seventh deck in an elegant glassed room that affords views of the port of Dublin for the reception for our Georgia Tech clan. I provide a few thoughts on Tech and the exciting times we are enjoying. I urge folks who have not been back to campus recently to drop by to see the "new" Georgia Tech. We end the reception and move to a small dining area on the fourth deck that nicely fits our party — a wonderful way to close another fine day.

Wales — English Yes, but Celtic Too jiS*j'...':.)

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eaving Ireland our destination is Holyhead, Wales. Our guide explains that while there are 3 million people in Wales, they are outnumbered 4-to-l by sheep. Every chance he gets he encourages us to eat lamb.

Like Ireland, Wales was settled by Celts in

4000 to 5000 B.C. But unlike Ireland, which was spared the Roman and Anglo-Saxon occupations, Wales was overrun by them. As in other regions, the Celtic population of Wales had a contentious relationship with its occupiers. In 1200 under Edward I, the English crushed the Welsh armies and went about building strongholds to enforce their dominance. Although Wales became part of England, it did not give up its Celtic heritage or its language.

Today about 20 percent of the natives use the Welsh language, and it is heard frequently in the towns. It is not easy to pronounce. At Castle Caernarfon, the visitor frequently sees the phrase "cadwch oddi ar y gladwett" — keep off the grass.

And a Welsh claim to fame is having the town with the longest name in the European Union — by a lot — Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. Don't ask me how to pronounce it, but do know what is shown on the road sign is only a third of the actual name.

Our travels in Wales take us along the route of several of the roads of the famous Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford. A giant of his time, Telford worked in Wales, Scotland and England designing and constructing innovative roads, lock systems, bridges and buildings, many of which are still standing.

Telford designed a beautiful winding road > »

Thomas Telford, the famous Scottish civil engineer and a hero of mine, designed one of the first suspension bridges — and oldest still in operation — and we are treated to its sight, spanning high above the Menai Straight.

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A highlight of a stop at Torosay Castle is a visit to the gardens. A hard-to-find circular pond is surrounded by ferns, elephant ears and other plants grown large that invade the imagination as well as capture the eye. Lower down behind the walls of the garden and outside the view of most visitors, a stand of rare Himalayan blue poppies resides in isolated splendor.

that climbs through the Snowdonia Mountains, which is part of our trip after we leave Caernarfon Castle. Rugged and scenic, these mountains attract climbers from all over the world and served as the training base for Sir Edmund Hillary for his climb of Mount Everest.

The Telford road passes near lands where the Cloughs are known to have lived historically and even live today, including Denbigh, Berain and Portmeirion. It is suggested that John Clough, from whom I am descended, immigrated to Massachusetts in 1635 because his older brother inherited all the family lands.

The Isles of Scotland

T

he Celtic connection to Scotland is more recent than in the other places we have visited, having been largely created as a result of an Irish expansion from the east about the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion from the north. Prior to the Irish expansion, Scotland was known as Caledonia, but afterward it took the name Scotland from the Irish, who were called "Scoti."

It was Iona, a windblown granite island of few trees surrounded by rough seas, that St. Colum Cille (St. Columba) chose in 561 as the site of his monastery and the center of his religious order. St. Columba was said to be a large and charismatic man who felt Christianity should be brought directly to the people, allowing them access to the scriptures. He was exiled by the priests in Ireland

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for his beliefs and he chose Iona because it was the first island from which he could no longer see Ireland.

It was here on this remote island surrounded by windy seas and in sight of looming mountains that St. Columba absorbed a respect for the powers of nature and gained an appreciation for the forces that helped shape the ancient cultures and people of the Celts and Picts.

St. Columba attracted committed disciples to Iona, built an abbey and began his life's work to win the Scots, Picts and Celts to Christianity.

Monks from his order, working first at Iona and later at a monastery in Kells, produced the Book of Kells in the ninth century.

With its isolation, dramatic setting and rich religious history, Iona gives the visitor a chance to reach inward to a place that offers respite from the chaos of the modern world. Although the abbey of St. Columba burned down, a new one has been rebuilt that is consistent with the sense of this place. Generations of religious scholars have traveled here to reflect and meditate.

Nearby a small Protestant sanctuary is found that was built by none other than our famous civil engineering friend, Telford. A religious man, Telford was commissioned to build 52 chapels in the remote Highland parishes of Scotland, Iona included. He accomplished this task with the same enthusiasm that he brought to his more visible and challenging work.

After a brief visit to the Isle of Skye, our last stop, other than using Edinburgh as a departure point, is the Orkney Islands. The Orkneys are an

archipelago of 70 islands, with a total population of around 20,000, which our guide says is about right given the conditions. The history of the Orkneys is entirely different from that of the other stops. The Orkneys were governed for centuries by Norway before they were ceded to Scotland.

The principal attraction in Kirkwall is St. Magnus Cathedral, "the light in the North."

Founded in 1137, it was named in honor of the earl of Orkney, Magnus Erlendsson, who was killed by his cousin, Haakon Paulson. Built of native sandstone and rising impressively above the buildings of Kirkwall, the cathedral was constructed over centuries, reflecting both Romanesque and Gothic styles. Originally Catholic and later Protestant, the cathedral today serves the small town of Kirkwall as a concert hall and community center as much as a church.

The Ring of Brodgar was erected around 2500 B.C. by the Picts who occupied the coastal areas outside Kirkwall. This monument was built even before that at Stonehenge. Precisely 104 meters in

diameter, the ring was made up of 60 tall stones, only 27 of which remain standing today. The purpose of the ring is not known, but it appears to have been a place for worship or burial as well as to have been used for astrological purposes in observing and recording solar and lunar alignments.

A few miles to the north another amazing archeological discovery was made in 1850 after an ocean storm pounded the side of an inlet and exposed an area previously buried in sand and rock. Here was found the village of Skara Brae, a Neolithic hamlet with a preserved set of houses and community buildings. Skara Brae was built, expanded and occupied from 3100 to 2500 B.C. The village is the best preserved of its type in the world and allows us insights into how the people lived, what they ate and how their culture worked.

Farther down the coast of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, England and France, the Celts were also beginning to organize a civilization that would grow and prosper. >Âť

Our route to the port city of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull includes "one track"roads that require drivers to make split-second decisions as to who will proceed and who will find a "lay by." The natives go to great lengths to keep the process good natured with lots of waves and nods. Driving is not simple as abundant rock arch bridges are set at angles to minimize the length but make turns by buses a challenge.

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Homeward Bound n spite of a minimal physical presence, the impact of the Celts remains in their legends, history, music, games and art. Written documents of ancient history are spare, but the Book of Kells makes up in quality what is lacked in quantity. And the works of Irish and Scottish authors of recent times have created a body of literature second to none.

This trip helped put things in their place, order the legends in history, tie down the relationships between the different countries with Celtic influence, separate fact from fiction, see with our own eyes historical sites, hear people speak the multiple languages derived from Celtic and understand how state, power and religion interceded in history.

For each of us with Celtic heritage it helps us enrich our understanding of those whose existence led to ours and fills in some of the tapestry that forms who we are.

Today, people of Celtic origin are spread around the globe in one of the great diasporas of history. In our own country, upward of some 40 million people trace some of their ancestry to the Celts. They have contributed to the growth of our nation in the form of labor, hard work and creative input that has helped us grow into the world's greatest power of our time, GT

I

Coming to Skara Brae is a fitting way to conclude our trip because it allows us to see how the people who lived 5,000 years ago were creating a way of life and a culture that led to early civilization. While the Picts and Celts were not the same, their way of life had to have been similar.

Because of Skara Brae, we can see how a people found a site that allowed them not only to sustain themselves but the time to begin to develop religion, to observe nature in an analytical way, to develop rudimentary arts and crafts and create a family structure.

â&#x20AC;˘ The Georgia Tech Alumni Association will offer the Celtic Lands tour again in the spring, from May 29 to June 9. For more information, contact Martin Ludwig, director of Alumni Travel, at (404) 894-0758 or go to our Web site at gtalumni.org and request a brochure.

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GeorgiaTech and the Celtic Tiger

By G. Wayne Clough

A

nne and I returned to Ireland later in June for a milestone in Georgia Tech history and one that will ally us with the future of Ireland.

For some time Tech faculty and Georgia Tech Research Institute scientists have been developing links with their Irish counterparts as that country's economy has become increasingly based in technology. Today the Irish government, recognizing the growing competition from nations like India and China with strong talent pools and low wages, is looking for ways to sharpen its economic development strategy.

The government created the Irish version of the National Science Foundation to fund university research and development in strategic areas. When we returned to Dublin, the headlines of the Irish Times proclaimed plans for several billion dollars to be set aside for research and development over the next seven years.

Alongside the investment in research, the Irish government is seeking to establish incentives to encourage collaborative work between its research universities and industry as well as create a system to improve

commercialization of the intellectual property derived from the research.

To this end, with the help of David Parekh of GTRI, Ireland called upon Georgia Tech to work with its economic development arm, the IDA. Georgia Tech faculty and staff will work with Irish research universities and industry to facilitate the goals of the program.

Georgia Tech Ireland will be based in Athlone, a medium-size city in the middle of the country where we have been provided offices in a technology park in a prominent location. Athlone has a long history, going back to its use by Celtic tribes, but today it is a high-tech center. With the River Shannon running through the heart of its old district, Athlone is picturesque and vibrant.

To celebrate the inauguration of Georgia Tech Ireland, we had dinner at a restaurant on beautiful Lough Lee outside of Athlone. But before this I am offered an opportunity to try my hand at a bit of Irish golf with Steve Cross, director of GTRI, and two of our colleagues from IDA. Peering out the window of my hotel before we left, I noted the weather included rain and rousing winds that had the hotel flags

Waiting for the skies to dear are, left to right, President Clough, Ciaran Morris, Frank Davenport and Steve Cross, Unfortunately, the rains outlasted the golfers.

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flapping. Our Irish friends insisted that if a little rain and wind prevented golf, no one would ever play on the island. So off we went and we hit our first drives in light rain with the wind in our faces.

While the rain stopped from time to time, the wind did not. By the ninth hole, we were sopping wet, but a par led me to think a little water and wind were not so bad after all. Lining up our tee shots in what can only be described as a squall, we were lured to retire to the nearby clubhouse, where a shot of heated Irish whiskey renewed the spirits. As the whiskey warmed the body, we concluded the rest of our round should come on another visit to Ireland.

The formal opening of Georgia Tech Ireland took place the next morning. The event was a forum on the expected research activities to come and included remarks by Brian Cowen, the Irish minister of finance. I spoke on the competitiveness issues and Georgia Tech's future role in Ireland. Representatives of the Irish press interviewed us and the news was reported widely the next day. All in all, it was an excellent start to our new venture in Ireland and one we believe can help this nation of high aspirations maintain its progress.

Georgia Tech Ireland also represents another step in the growing global presence of the Institute. With campuses in France and Singapore and joint degree programs with universities in China, Germany and Mexico, we are building the platform needed to allow our faculty and students to be in close contact with the best scholars in the world and to leverage our resources with those from our overseas partners, GT

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404.385.3500 www.dlpe.gatech.edu

RICHARD Alumnus Richard DeMillo is the John P. Imlay Jr. dean of the College of Computing. In 1972, he earned his PhD in computer science at Georgia Tech, where he was founding director of the Software Test and Evaluation Center, and taught for 11 years before starting a career in industry and government. When he was named dean in 2002, DeMillo was chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard and earlier had directed the computer and computation research division of the National Science Foundation. DeMillo has transformed Tech's computer science curriculum to promote interdisciplinary learning in the areas of supercomputing, robotics, security, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and humancomputer interaction. He helped establish the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and UT-Battelle, aimed at increasing advanced supercomputing technology and easing partnerships with leading research centers and academic institutions.

TER VIEW The New Face of Computing Interview by John Dunn Photography

by Gary Meek

What will the Christopher W. Klaus Advanced Computing Building mean to the college?

The Klaus building is a gateway to the new center of campus. It makes a statement about new technologies that have become important at Georgia Tech and the building reflects what Christopher Klaus is all about.

He is an entrepreneur. This is an entrepreneurial building. He is a collaborator. This is a building that supports collaboration.

Significantly, this building is devoted to faculty, to research and to collaboration. The dean's office isn't there, so this is not an administrative building. Undergraduate classrooms aren't there, so this isn't an instructional building. This is really about the technology and about how it is going to go forward.

Georgia Tech is turning tradi-

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tional computer science education on its head. How? Think about what has happened in computing over the last 20 years. Computing used to be about the computer. It used to be about the technology. What the computer was going to be used for and the applications were almost afterthoughts.

We're turning that model around. Computing is valuable because of the application. We lead with that. It's not that we don't do the underlying technology. Intel spends millions of dollars developing new semiconductors and Microsoft spends a ton of money developing new operating systems technology.

Universities are going to play an increasingly less important role in that game and an increasingly more important role in figuring out what the novel applications are â&#x20AC;&#x201D; how the computer

impacts the real world. We think of it as horizontal education. We give students a view of computing that allows them to take exquisite knowledge of the technology and apply it in many different areas.

The college refers to the "new face of computing." What is that?

The new face of computing is about how computing is going to be used, how it is going to change the world. It's also about the new people that are being drawn to computing as a profession. These are students who would not have considered computing as a major two years ago because they thought that the field was not interesting.

You've revamped the curriculum and introduced "threads."

What are threads?

I came here as dean in 2002, just after the dot-com bubble burst. I realized that computer science departments should be doing more to provide the why of computing and not only the how.

Around that concept, we built the idea of threads. The whole purpose of a thread is that it doesn't limit you to the idea of a core curriculum. It doesn't limit you to the idea of electives. It allows students to pursue courses of studies that really interest them.

We have a thread in computing and media. We have another thread in com>Âť

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>> I N T E R V I E W Robots are getting much smaller, much cheaper and they are being used in a variety of environments.

In the not-so-distant future — five years from now, 10 years from now — the worldwide market leaders in robotics will have not 60,000 installed robots but 600 million.

That's a huge change.

puting and communications. If you are going to be a successful game designer, for example, you have to know an awful lot about the underlying technology but you also have to know a lot about narrative, a lot about literature. You have to know a lot about what it takes to develop compelling interfaces. But you also have to know about networks and how to distribute content in this Internet-based world. You learn that by taking a series of courses that lead you through that process.

If you want to be a computer security specialist who knows how to build the right kind of interfaces for software systems, you would take a thread that corresponds to how to build the interfaces and the thread that corresponds to computer security and put the two of them together. And you'd end up with a computer science degree.

Every single degree that you can dream up using the threads concept meets not only Tech's rigorous standards but is also accredited by the engineering accreditation organizations.

How should American universities respond to the loss of computer science jobs to India and China?

American universities should respond the way Georgia Tech is responding, which is to not continue to educate computer science students in the areas that are being commoditized. When Thomas Friedman talked about the threads program in his book "The World Is Flat," he made the point that you're not going to be able to outsource a great storyteller, a great author, a great poet or a great designer. We want to

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

give the students the technical base so that they can perform at the right level and then give them a set of skills so that they will continue to add value to their employers. Those jobs will never be outsourced.

What is the concept behind the Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center established by the College of Computing and College of Engineering?

It is really part of the new face of computing. We've always had a great robotics group here at Georgia Tech, not just in the College of Computing but also in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering — across the campus really. We decided to get serious about putting all of that expertise together in an interdisciplinary program in robotics and we began attracting international attention. KUKA Robotics, the large German industrial robotics firm, endowed a chair in robotics.

Then we started looking at a PhD in robotics and we attracted senior faculty members who we thought could lead new efforts.

At the same time, people like Bill Gates were thinking about how do you educate people to program in this new environment that we find ourselves in. We were hiring some of the best roboticists in the world. Microsoft wanted to fund an activity that was aimed at putting all of this stuff together and the robotics institute came out of it. Microsoft awarded Tech $1 million to bring robotics technology into the computer science curriculum.

Will all students have personal robots in the future?

Yes. We will send students to the

bookstore to get their MicrosoftGeorgia Tech robot package, which has a little robot in it that connects to their computers. The students will learn how to program by programming these little mobile robots. Robots are intrinsically fun to program.

But there is also a deeper purpose. The robotics marketplace is undergoing a profound change. Robots are getting much smaller, much cheaper and they are being used in a variety of environments. In the not-too-distant future the worldwide market leaders in robotics will have not 60,000 installed robots but 600 million. That's a huge change. It is going to make new markets for robotics. It's going to mean there is a group of professionals needed to program those robots to run the systems, to develop the applications, to build the industries around them. We want to see Georgia Tech at the vanguard of that.

These personal robots probably can't be programmed to clean a student's room. What is the immediate and future role of personal robots?

This is like the beginning of the personal computer revolution.

There weren't that many applications. Not many people could foresee the day when there would be an entire software industry devoted to PCs. Robotics is at the same stage.

Right now all of the applications are handcrafted, but you can see the momentum growing behind technology clusters that will specialize in robotic applications from health care to food processing, from logistics to entertainment. It's an exciting time to be in the field.

What have been the breakthroughs in supercomputing?

Georgia Tech has become very much the new kid on the block.

We've become a very important player in this field.

Supercomputing is an area that advances like a braid. You make an advance in hardware, you make an advance in software, then you make an advance in application, you make another advance in hardware and then you make another advance in software. Georgia Tech has really been at the foreground at getting this flywheel moving to get hardware, software and applications working together. That's been recognized in a variety of ways. We're opening a campus at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which has one of the greatest concentrations of supercomputers in the world. We've been involved in their university program for many years, but now we have a permanent presence at Oak Ridge. We are also partnering

with existing supercomputer centers at the University of California in San Diego and other Department of Energy labs.

What key challenges are ahead?

Part of the challenge is that it is not very cheap to get into this game. The performance of the supercomputers that we are talking about is measured in a unit called FLOPS — floating point operations per second. In order to be a player in the supercomputer game, you have to have a computer that operates at teraFLOPS. A teraFLOPS is a trillion operations per second. We

want 100 teraFLOP machines. So far Georgia Tech has bought and deployed 20 teraFLOPS in the last 18 months. We have become one of the top 50 supercomputer sites in the world. As a result, we have become among the top 10 university supercomputer sites. We have our sights set on a petaFLOPS computer — a thousand teraFLOPS. We have a real chance to move our scientific agenda, our technology agenda forward simply because we have unfettered access to these kinds of machines.

Georgia Tech has worked with IBM to develop a silicon-based chip that is 250 times faster than chips now in use. What is the significance of that?

That work was done in electrical engineering — but it does fit into the strategy that we were talking about — a braid of one strand of hardware, one strand of software, one strand of applications. Being an acknowledged leader in advancing the hardware technology is really an essential part of that strategy in the arena of supercomputing.

Supercomputers are measured in a unit called FLOPS — floating point operations per second. In order to be a player in the supercomputer game, you have to have a computer that operates at teraFLOPS—a trillion operations per second. So far Georgia Tech has bought and deployed 20 teraFLOPS in the last 18 months.

We have become one of the top 50 supercomputer sites in the world.

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>>INTERVIEW You are known to keep your finger on the pulse of Silicon Valley. Why is that important?

I am someone who believes that it is important to know why you are doing something in academia. We've been able to make great advances at Georgia Tech by being very conscious of where our graduates are going to go and what technology is going to be used for in the real world.

Part of the way that you measure that is to measure yourself against where the world leaders are. In information technology the world leaders are in that little valley between San Francisco and San Jose. That's where most of the venture capital in the world is. That is where most of the new wealth in information technology has been created. Keeping strong ties to Silicon Valley is an important part of our strategy for positioning Georgia Tech in the larger technology community.

How vital is computer security?

It's huge. It's hard to open up a newspaper these days and not find a frontpage article about identity theft or how cyber warfare is being used by terrorist groups to disrupt networks or companies that are being investigated by the SEC because their access policies to their networks are not what they should be. For 10 or 15 years, Atlanta has been one of the centers in the country in information security.

What are your aspirations for the college?

We want to continue to improve our educational programs. We are innovating fast and with good results. Our challenge is how we impact the rest of the world. We would like to have a major impact on commercial technology. We want the students that come out of Georgia Tech to be universally recognized as the best-prepared students in the world, GT

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A L U M N I A L M A N A C < <

In 1931, 43 years after the school opened, Georgia Tech's first students held a reunion as Pioneers of 1888, an event attended by 24 of the earliest alumni. The first two graduates, H.L. Smith, ME 1890, and George G. Crawford, ME 1890, both were present. Crawford, the luncheon speaker, "gave a great talk." Afterward, the former classmates exchanged stories, photos and renewed camaraderie "with the spirit of undergraduate days," the alumni magazine said.

Participants in the most one-sided football game in history, Georgia Tech's defeat of Cumberland 222-0 in 1916, held a reunion at the Greater Atlanta Club on Oct. 12, 1956, attended by 22 Georgia Tech players and six members of the Cumberland team. Cumberland's Morris Gouger, then a banker in Robstown, Texas, said he managed to hold the score down. "In one of the smartest bits of football strategy on record, I called for a quarterback sneak on fourth down late in the final period. We needed 25 yards and were deep in our own territory. I made it back to the line of scrimmage and saved us from really ignominious defeat. If we had punted, as we should have, Tech would have blocked the kick, made another touchdown and the score would have been 229-0."

Navy captain Richard Truly, AE 59, was pilot of the space shuttle Columbia's second flight in the fall of 1981 — and it marked the second time a Georgia Tech astronaut was at the controls.

John Young, AE 52, had been commander of the first shuttle mission in April. It was the first time a manned vehicle made a return visit into space and back to Earth, making a perfect touchdown on Nov. 14, 1981. "This is some kind of flying machine," Truly said of the shuttle, GT

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Limited Edition Deluxe

BABY BUZZ CLUB The Georgia Tech Alumni Association is pleased to introduce the Deluxe Baby Buzz Club.

This limited edition gift has all of the original Baby Buzz favorites, plus a wonderful CD featuring original lullabies and a piece entitled "Georgia Tech Medley."

Deluxe Baby Buzz includes: Canvas Bag GT Rattle

Buzz Bib

Sipper Cup,

Maxwell's Lullabies — Special GT Edition' *While supplies last

Baby Buzz includes: Canvas Bag GT Rattle

/—

Buzz Hooded Towel

Buzz Hooded Towel Buzz Bib

•* s**

| ORDERED BY:

Deluxe Baby Buzz Club ($49.95 + $6.00 S&H)*

| Name: I Telephone #: • Gift card should read:

$

" Send to: • Baby's sex: D Male D Female • Shipping Address: (No P.O. Boxes please)

Individual Lullaby CD ($12.95 + $2.00 S&H)*

• Payment Information: . a Visa D MC D Discover

Original Baby Buzz Club ($39.95 + $6.00 S&H)*

$

Sipper C u p

Enroll by returning the order form a n d your check for $49.95 + 8% tax (in Georgia only) a n d $6.00 Shipping a n d handling made payable to

Georgia Tech Alumni Association 190 North Avenue, NW Atlanta, GA 30313

D AMEX

D Check

• Credit Card

$

|#: I Exp. date:

Tax:

1 Signature

TOTAL $

$

Qeorgia Tech Return Address Laheh Additional Logo Choices: Your Name Your Address Your City, State and Zip Code Actual Size of label 2"x .625"

w

for 120 Color Labels Includes Shipping and Handling

Circle the logo you'd like on your lahclsl First Line.

Second Line Third Line _

Your Purchase Supports

Fourth Line (ifdesiredL

Georgia Tech Programs!

Name on Credit Card

•Show Your Georgia Tech Spirit •Self Sticking •High Qualify ^ . '

• Unique Gift Idea • Fast Delivery * Satisfaction Guaranteed VISA

.Exp. Date.

Credit Card Number Type of Credit Card

Complete form and mail with credit card information or check for $7 to: Merchandise Georgia Tech Alumni Association 190 North Avenue Atlanta, GA 30313 Make checks payable to Georgia Tech Alumni Association

Order online at www.gtalumni.org/merchandise

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

Epps Charter makes flying easy

remember easy?

The Epps f l e e t ; Citation and Lear business jets PilatusPC12and King Air turboprops

St Simons Island and the Golden Isles

A Great Place to Work, Play or Retire!

Call Me for Real Estate Opportunities in Georgia's Golden Isles!

EPPS x PDK • Atlanta

Your Yellow Jacket REALTOR® Herb Miles, BSIM 67 Cantrell Properties, Inc. (877)638-1010 Buzz@HerbMiles.com

Yello

770/458,9851 eppsaviation.com

© Shell Aviation

ESmE

he Move

Another benefit from the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Preferential YELLOW JACKET treatment * * * * * * *

Minimum of a 55% discount on all interstate relocations.

Free Full-Value Coverage up to $50,000.

15% discount on all Georgia and Florida intrastate moves.

Guaranteed on time pick-up and delivery.

Personalized attention from start to finish.

Top rated drivers will be assigned to all Yellow Jacket shipments.

Sanitized air-ride vans.

Contact Tom Larkins (The Ramblin' Relocator) for details on this program

1.800-899-2527 or e-mail him at tom.larkins@atlanticrelocation.com

Atlantic Relocation Systems/ Interstate Agent for

ATLAS VAN LINES 1909 Forge Street Tucker, GA 30084 * A portion of the proceeds collected from the transportation costs will be paid to the Georgia Tech Alumni Association

Georgia Tech Alumni Association

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

83

F A C U LT Y P R O F I L E

Green Architecture

By John Dunn Photography: Gary Meek

Classical architecture professor Elizabeth Dowling views solar power as an extension of very old knowledge

84

A

lumna Elizabeth Meredith Dowling has a passion for renaissance, classical and traditional architecture. She leads students on treks through Greece and Italy to study ancient Greek, etruscan and baroque architecture. But when she looks to the future, she sees solar energy.

The study of solar energy is "absolutely" necessary, says Dowling, Arch 71. And architects can incorporate solar power in traditional design: "I tell all of my students that in their lifetime working in sustainable architecture is going to be essential."

The modern emphasis on sustainable or green architecture returns to a historic concern, Dowling says.

"Sometimes people are surprised that I have these two interests," she adds. "They think of sustainability as some architectural form that looks like it came out of 'Star Wars.' It may seem like it's from 'Brave New World,' but it's not. It's really very old knowledge. Traditional architecture, from its very nature, has always been sustainable. It's always been an issue for architects."

Historically architects have designed buildings to maximize cool air in the summer and heating in the winter. "If you look at buildings built in America in the 17th century in the Northeast, they all face south because the most difficult season is the wintertime and the houses face the sun all day long."

It has only been since the abundance of cheap energy in the 20th century that sustainability ceased to be a consideration for architects, she says.

"For the vast history of architecture, it has always been a primary concern."

Dowling grew up in a Georgia Tech family.

Her father, WC. "Bill" Meredith, ME 34, and older brother, Bill Meredith III, IM 62, established the tradition.

"The things I really liked were math and architecture. My mother said if I went into mathematics, I'd end up being a schoolteacher. So I chose archi-

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

tecture," Dowling says, laughing. She has been teaching architecture at Tech for about 30 years.

"I came to Tech in 1966. At that time there were only about 250 women. There was so much camaraderie among the students in architecture it was like a little fraternity."

A

fter receiving her master's from the University of Illinois, she was invited to teach at Tech. "That's when I found I really loved teaching.

It was an unexpected turn. I always expected to have a career in architecture."

She earned her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also became interested

in ornamentation, postmodern architecture and its classical contradiction of modernist ideas.

Dowling says European architects promoted modernism in the United States following World War II and it flourished. "It really supplanted teaching about traditional and classical architecture. The field almost died out. There were young people, like myself, who just hated what we were taught to do.

"I was really interested in bringing meaning back to architecture," she says. "The symbolic ornamentation on buildings is considered the reason we love architecture so much and why we preserve so many of our old buildings."

Dowling became involved in history preservation soon after graduating from Tech and joining the successful campaign to save the Fox Theatre.

"There was a feeling that we were losing buildings that couldn't be replaced. It started with the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in New York City," she says. The station, a masterpiece of Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of the city, was demolished in the mid-1960s to make room for the Pennsylvania Plaza /Madison Square Garden complex.

When the Fox Theatre was threatened, Dowling became involved in the grassroots drive to preserve the building. >Âť

Author of several books on classical architecture, Tech professor Elizabeth Dowling wants to blend traditional with new "green" techniques to create more sustainable buildings in the future.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Fall 2006

85

>>FACULTYPROFILE

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

Dowling's innovative study trips have proved to be "a wonderful way to teach," she says. The class is "right in the middle of everything we're studying."

D

owling received a grant from the Georgia Tech Foundation to study the work of Philip Shutze, Arch 12, a master of Italianate and Georgian revival styles. It was also an introduction to classical architecture.

Dowling's research on Shutze took her to Italy. He had been at the American Academy in Rome. It resulted in the 1989 publication of "American Classicist: The Architecture of Philip Trammell Shutze." The second edition of the book was printed in 2001. The book received an International Book Award from the American Institute of Architects and a bronze medal from the Georgia AIA. In 2003, her book, "Timeless Architecture: Homes of Distinction by Harrison Design," was published and the next year "New Classicism: The Rebirth of Traditional Architecture" was published

by Rizzoli Publications International.

In 1993, Dowling started the College of Architecture's summer program in Italy. "Shutze revealed Italy to me," she says. "This was an opportunity to teach about the things that I taught normally in the classroom, but to do it on site proved to be the absolutely most wonderful way to teach."

Faculty members teaching the summer program in Italy now include Dowling, Associate Dean Douglas Allen and associate professor Athanassios Economou. This past summer, Economou added Greece to the program. Students study classical art and architecture beginning in ancient Greece and following its permutations in later Roman, renaissance and baroque periods.

"My whole concept for the program is that we should be right in the middle of everything we are studying," Dowling says. "The hotels we've selected are right in the historic center of the city.

You walk out of the door and you live with the work we are studying. It's a richer, deeper understanding than you could get from any sort of a classroom course."

Dowling says she enjoys teaching.

"It's really wonderful to be with young creative people who are at the beginning point of their lives. Some people are in careers where they have to deal with people who are going through some of the worst times of their lives. I find teachers get to deal with people during the most wonderful times of their lives." GT

Tech

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SAVE THE DATE

Nothing . . . has ever . . . said, . . . quite like this!

Friday, November 17, 2006 5:30-7:30 PM A reception honoring members of Founders' Council By invitation

Founders' Council is an honorary society of alumni and friends who have made life-income gifts or estate provisions of at least $25,000 for the support of Georgia Tech.

For information, call 404.894.4678 or e-mail founderscouncil@dev.gatech.edu

Georgia Tech

Foetal®!?® 0

(sxumgrJD

Creative Strategies for Tax-wise Estate Planning Presented by noted Atlanta attorney Henry L. Bozvden Jr. Friday, October 27, 2006 9:00 AM - Noon Georgia Tech Global Learning & Conference Center

Primed and Ready to Paint

Home • Garage • Shed Barn • Office For more information visit: www.logodoor.com

For registration information, call 404.894.4678 or e-mail founderscouncil@dev.gatech.edu Registration fee waived for members of Founders' Council, the honorary society of alumni and friends who have made life-income gifts or estate provisions of at least $25,000 for the support of Georgia Tech.

LOUIES Let's Build Something Together *> 2006 by Lowe's* Al wfts rasmsi Lowe's aid »« gate testy are re#*jed twfejnaita of U LLC

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2006

87

>>PHOTOFINISH

A flag memorial and remembrance service was held on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. A flag was placed on Sidles lawn representing each life that was lost in the attacks. A moment of silence was observed on campus at noon Sept. 11 and a remembrance ceremony was held at 6 p.m. at the Kessler Campanile. Three alumni were killed in the attacks. Carl Max Hammond Jr., Phys 87, of New Hampshire, was aboard United flight 175, one of the two hijacked aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center. Mike Gann, IM 85, of Roswell, Ga., who was in New York on business, was trapped on the 106th floor of the first of the twin towers hit by hijacked aircraft. He called his wife, Robin. "He told me to turn on the TV. He said there was a fire, that a plane had hit the building. He said he thought he was stuck and wouldn't get out." Murray Greer Jr., IM 62, of Maryland, died in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. Greer worked for a firm that dealt mainly with the Navy and Department of Defense. GT

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Leave the hassle of getting to and from the games to us!

Clemson Bus Trip ctober21 ister today at gtalumni.org/clemson

UGA Bus Trip November 25 Register today at gtalumni.org/uga

Have tickets to the Clemson and University of Georgia football games this fall? Know how you are getting to the games? If not, then leave the driving to us! It is time to hit the road and cheer the Yellow Jackets on to victory. Your Alumni Association-sponsored bus trip includes round-trip transportation, -^fepL * r beer, wine, soda, snacks and a meal. \**%&& Georgia Tech Alumni A B

, C H f t R 0 0 CROSWELL

Support Tech with a flick of the wrist.

Our credit cards now have tap-and-go technology.

Georgia Tech Alumni Association credit cards just got even better. Because now they're equipped with the MasterCard® PayPass™ feature, which lets you pay in a flash at select locations. Just tap your card on the special reader and fly through the movie line, drug store, fast food restaurant—anywhere you see the PayPass logo.

Of course, you can still use your card everywhere MasterCard credit cards are accepted— at more than 24 million locations worldwide. Plus, you'll support your Alumni Association with every purchase—including your PayPass transactions. It's the faster, better way to pay.

Call 1-800-GET-MBNA Please mention priority code LMW5 Or visit mbnapaypass.com

mbna f

pay. pass

There are costs associated with the use of this credit card. To request specific information about the costs, you may contact MBNA America Bank, N.A., the exclusive issuer and administrator of the Platinum Plus credit card program, by calling 1-800-523-7666 or writing to P.O. Box 15020, Wilmington, DE 19850. TTY users, call 1-800-833-6262. MBNA, the MBNA logo, the tree symbol, and Platinum Plus are registered service marks of MBNA America Bank, N.A. PayPass is a registered trademark of MasterCard International. All other marks are the property of their owners.

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