Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 83, No. 03 2007

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Mary Jervis Hayes and H. Craig Hayes, IM 1965 Atlanta, Georgia

Tor years I had wanted to make a major gift recognizing my father's 93-year love of Tech/'

• Native Atlantan; graduate of Druid Hills I ligh School.

• At Tech, corresponding secretary of Kappa Alpha Order; member of Society for Advancement of Management.

• Strong family tradition at foch with father Herbert B. Hayes, Class of 1933; uncles R. Dudley Hayes Sr., CE 1926, and James A. Hayes, C O M 1928; and cousins Robert D. Hayes Jr., I M 1962, and Thomas M . Hayes, I M 1968.

• M B A in Real Estate from Georgia State University.

• Past A l u m n i Trustee (1997-2000); Class of 1965 40th Reunion Fund Committee member.

• W o r k e d w i t h the Georgia Tech Research Institute before j o i n i n g Delta; retired in 1998 as general manager, Properties and Facilities.

• Married for 36 years to Mary Jervis Hayes (Agnes Scott, 1967), formerly of Rome, Georgia.

• three children: John, Alexander, and Kathleen.

• Hobbies include golf, jogging, and fitness.

Gifts to Georgia Tech • Roll Call donor for 45 years.

• Alexander-Tharpe supporter for 32 years; A-T Life Member.

• l i f e l o n g donor to Tech's special fundraising initiatives for unrestricted support and capital projects.

• Charitable remainder trust funded with real estate to establish the Mary Jervis Hayes and H. Craig Hayes Endowment Fund for the support of the AlexanderTharpe Fund, the Class of 1965 Scholarship Fund, and for the unrestricted support of the Institute. A section of the Fourth Street Apartments has been named Herb Hayes FJouse in recognition of the unrestricted gift.

Thoughts on Giving to Georgia Tech: "For years I had wanted to make a major gift recognizing my father's 93-year love of lech. M y 40th reunion was a perfect lime to make a donation honoring Dad's memory and ensuring h i m a permanent place on the lech campus. I hope generations of students w i l l enjoy and fondly remember I lerb Hayes House."

Mary Jervis Hayes and H. Craig Flayes, I M 1965, join 884 members of Georgia lech's Founders' C o u n c i l , the hon-

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orary society of a l u m n i and friends who have made non-contingent fiequests or lifei n c o m e gifts of at least $25,000 for the

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

support of Georgia Tech.

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A Vintage Career

Back to Nature

Cover Story Ken Laird's career took him to California, where he and his family fell in love with the Napa Valley. From that love sprang a passion for growing the finest grapes possible and a business for sharing that produce through California wines.

Researchers at Georgia Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design are turning to the natural world for solutions to real-world problems. The concept of biomimetics actually is very old Leonardo da Vinci studied birds when designing his flying machine.

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Nl Tough Fairways The Georgia Tech Golf Club provides an opportunity to experience "one of the k most challenging courses you'll ever play."

Page 34

Engineer of Note On his way to winning the Young Film Composers Competition, Vivek Maddala developed audio technologies at Dolby Laboratories and toured with the rock band Boston. He says he intended to be both an electrical engineer and a composer all along.

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InFocus 1 Skydiving Champs Tragic Anniversary Flying for the Future 1 Tech Among Top for Biotech Transfer

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• Best Academic Places to Work • Dean of Students Urges Dialogue • New President Leads Lorraine • Maya Angelou Visits Tech's 'Composers' • Partners in Pediatrics • Sustainable Home • Hispanic Engineers

Alumnus Tom Noonan discusses the future of cyber security

Pacesetter Kenn Walker: Wired for Success

Pacesetter

Winston Churchill visited Georgia Tech as the Page 32 guest of honor at a military and naval parade and gave a brief address on military preparedness.

Linda Griffith: Tissue Engineering Pioneer

Faculty Profile Jim Hamblen: Rock Solid

Pacesetter Hawa Meskinyar: 'I Knew I Would One Day Return'

\ . .

Alumni Almanac

Readers write

InQuotes

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Interview

Feedback

Comments in the media from the Georgia Tech community

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Tech Notes

Viewpoint Looking Forward

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Research i Power Cell | Ocean Cloud Cover -» Nerve Tissue Regrowth

Photo Finish Homecoming Salute

Georgia Tech AlunnnrMagazine • Winter 2007

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When the Outcome of Your Meeting Matters

Plan Your Next Corporate Meeting With Us Book your next corporate meeting, conference, or training seminar at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center.

Georgia Tech Global Learning Center A PROFESSIONAL MEETING AND LEARNING FACILITY

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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 Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80 President

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

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. N.W., 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. © 2007 Georgia Tech Alumni Association Main Number (404) 894-2391.

Looking Forward It's a new year and a good time to say thanks to all of you for your terrific support of Georgia Tech once again. Tech is blessed with the strong support of our alumni and friends. This support is embodied through volunteer leadership, advocacy of the Institute, the recruitment of bright students, faculty and staff, career placement for our alumni and, last but not least, philanthropic support.

We're focused on fundamentals every day here at the Alumni Association. Our mission is to promote and serve alumni and the Institute. That one little sentence translates to a lot of action through a number of imperatives.

The first is the acquisition and management of information about you. We want to know where you are, what you're up to and how you like to hear from us. This is at the heart of our ability to build a valuable relationship with you and for you with Georgia Tech.

Another is communications. We strive to deliver the message about what Georgia Tech and her alumni are busy with in a regular, professional way that will be compelling reading for you — or a compelling listening experience through our podcasts.

The third is to engage you. We want to create meaningful and relevant programs that will bring value to you as an alumnus or a friend of Tech. We try to accomplish this in many ways: alumni career services, professional networking events, alumni clubs and affinity organizations, major events, student recruiting, volunteer leadership opportunities, educational experiences, travel and many more.

And finally, we ask you to support the Institute through the Roll Call because the annual fund is underwriting many of the amazing things you see happening at Georgia Tech.

Joseph P. Irwin, President

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 • Winter 2007

>>>FEEDBACK DramaTechs Great Run I joined DramaTech under "Coach" Mary Nell Santacroce in 1963 as a freshman. I served as president in 1964-65 and 1965-66. I was also the makeup man, having learned the "tricks" from a Hollywood makeup man by the name of Bill Tuttle, whose name can be seen listed in the credits of many movies made in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

He was particularly good at beards and hair appliances, skills I have used many times since those days.

I played a role in Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People," as well as most of the other shows done in the 1963-66 seasons.

Because I was a fast-track student, I completed undergraduate school in three years and was not able to continue with the company. I went on to graduate school at Tech in chemistry. DramaTech still holds a very warm place in my heart. I celebrate with DramaTech its outstanding "run."

James H. Carter II Chem 66, PhD 70 Plantation, Fla. Greg Abbott, director of DramaTech since 1984, died of

a heart attack Dec. 1. The night before he was heard laughing in the audience during a performance by the Let's Try This! improvisational troupe.

Prior to coming to Georgia Tech, Abbott served as artistic director of Onstage Atlanta and director of the Springer Theatre Company in Columbus, Ga. Abbott, 54, is survived by June, his wife of more than 30 years, and their two children, Lauren, a college student, and Michael, a high school junior.

Terrific Update President Wayne Clough gave a terrific update in the 2006 State of the Institute address and a view of the many changes taking place.

Also, as a Conoco-Phillips employee and a Georgia Tech alumnus, I am extremely proud of the honorary degree awarded to C.J. "Pete" Silas at Tech's fall commencement exercises.

Silas, [ChE 53], a past chairman and chief executive officer of Phillips Petroleum Co., richly deserves it.

For the past few years, I have assisted the Alumni Association in its student-recruiting

on global warming and suggesting that the ALUMNI

efforts through participation in college fairs. This has been extremely insightful because it has given me an opportunity to reflect on the qualities of graduating high school students as they enter college.

For many years I felt that the true test of a college or university was in the quality of the graduates it produces, In the last few years of recruiting, I have changed my mind. The true test of a college or university is in the quality of the students it recruits. Tech has continually impressed me over the years by attracting students who display the academic discipline and the leadership qualities to excel in their chosen fields.

MAGAZINE shouldn't print articles or letters that support his position. Everyone is entitled to his opinions and to try to persuade others to support his position; that's what democracy is all about.

The Earth has warmed over the past several thousand years, as is clear from the lack of mile-thick glaciers over most of North America and a sea level that has risen several hundred feet. This doesn't mean warming is linked to human activity, nor is human activity ruled out. If it is linked to human activity we're in trouble, because it's hard to imagine a scenario where 6 billion people today produce less green gases than the 1 million people who were alive during the last Ice Age. But the debate should be about facts, not personal attacks.

Joseph D, Harwood, EE 86 Palo Alto, Calif.

Cletus "Mel" Bost Phys 69, MS NE 70 Owasso, Okla.

The State of the Institute address is online at http://www. gatech. edu/president/soi/.

Fun, Work, Techship' All who work on TEAM Buzz projects come away with far more than they give. And it's a great chance for some good "Techship" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a word I have coined to combine Tech and fellowship.

Jerry Abbott, CE 55 Birmingham, Ala.

Debate the Issue

Art: Mac Evans

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

I'm disappointed to see letters accusing an alumnus of being unqualified to have an opinion

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

UOTES I've turned off my alarm clock.

— JackGuynn, MSIM70 who retired Oct. 1 as president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Apparently o-u-g-h has the most different pronunciations for a letter combination. A way to remember it is to say "rough, tough Clough."

— President Wayne Clough explaining the pronunciation of his name in an interview on WREK Radio covered by the Technique

It's like having 4,000 computers. The supercomputer weighs 35 tons, has two miles of wiring, requires 80 tons of air conditioning, consumes about 230 kilowatts of power.

It's the sixth largest academic computer in the United States. It's the largest in the world devoted to a single effort in systems biology. And it's going to get bigger.

—Jeffrey Skolnick Georgia Tech systems biologist, in Continuum 2006, a publication of the Georgia Research Alliance

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I've been to earthquake sites all over the world and usually, in two weeks after a quake, even in (undeveloped) countries, something is being done to progress. But here in the United States, in one of the world's great cities, there are still acres untouched. I still get depressed when I go down there.

It just isn't right. The profession of engineering let people down, and I and others on the committee like to think we can somehow help.

•-T*

— President Wayne Clough who led the 150-member Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force into New Orleans levee failures during Hurricane Katrina, in The Times-Picayune of New Orleans

Temptation can lead us to make inappropriate decisions; given this fact the most prudent thing is to avoid tempting conflict of interest scenarios in the first place.

— Steve Salbu College of Management dean on the Australian online newsletter CIO

it Because we are researching ways to detect spam based on where in the network it is coming from, rather than simply the contents of the e-mail itself, we are raising the bar considerably higher for spammers, whereas with existing filtering techniques spammers can easily develop new tricks.

— Nick Feamster Georgia Tech assistant professor of computing, NewsFactor.com

it Faculty should be made aware of how subtle remarks and examples used in curricular content can influence

Photo: Courtesy of IBM

Georgia Tech's program is the most innovative approach to computer science that we've seen.

— Stewart Tansley program manager in external research and programs at Microsoft Research, on Information Week

[student] performance in math and science courses as well as their choice of major.

— Sue Rosser dean of the Ivan Allen College, on how an aspect of stereotype can impact behavior in Science Now Daily News online

icals worth many dollars per pound, this could help make the biorefinery cost-effective.

— Charles Eckert professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society discussing green chemistry for fuel synthesis and processing

fit When the Web was started, it was started as a mechanism for sharing high energy particle physics data.

— Rebecca Grinter associate professor in Tech's College of Computing, about the first Web site domain in 1989 at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland.

This past October the Web reached a milestone 100 million sites with domain names.

ci We want to tap into a smart pool of people and give them a space to get together and collaborate. I'm thrilled.

— Christopher W. Klaus CIs 96 who withdrew from Georgia Tech as a student to launch the phenomenally successful Internet Security Systems and made a $15 million donation for construction of the $63 million, 412,000-square-foot Advanced Computing Building named for him, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

U It seems unlikely that fuel from a biorefinery — at least in the beginning — is going to be as cost-effective as fuel from traditional fossil sources. To make the biorefinery sustainable, we must therefore do everything we can to help the economics. If we can take a chemical stream worth only cents per pound and turn it into chem-

The chance of being right (five times in a row) is one chance out of 32 (or 3.1 percent).

— Michael Lacey of the School of Mathematics concerning the perfect record of Princess the pigskin-prognosticating camel in making picks for a New Jersey radio station on Asbury Park Press.com.

Princess missed on her sixth pick.

it The coastal region is expanding in the tourist

sector, but manufacturing is disappearing. What you need is knowledge-based companies. We also need to innovate the manufacturing sector to compete.

— Orjan Isacson regional manager of the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute in Savannah, Ga., on Savannahnow.com

People who have effective outlets for stress are more productive workers. I think it's one of those sets of circumstances where doing something that is the right and good thing to do also makes good business sense.

U

— Joe Evans, IM 71 chairman of Flag Bank, on why the bank has two chaplains working 10 hours a week, in the Atlanta Business Chronicle

The U.S. should guarantee more clearlyfromthe beginning that it will not attack North Korea. Apparently, North Korean leader Kim Jong II is thinking about the survival and handover of the regime. In order to persuade the North back to the international community, we need normalization of economic ties with it I hope both the U.S. and North Korea will become more flexible. The U.S. should make the UN. sanctions against North Korea one track, but at the same time, it should let other participants of the six-party talks pay attention to demands from the North.

— John Endicott director of the Georgia Tech Center for International Strategy, on Donga.com, a Seoul, South Korea, online newsletter

INFOCUS

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

Tech Alums Crowned Skydiving World Champs

Team USA — including Shannon Pilcher, BC 94, and Ian Bobo, IE 94 — perform the winning jump at the 2006 Federation Aeronautique Internationale World Championships of Skydiving in Germany. For the competition, a fourman team exits the aircraft at 10,000 feet linked together and must execute up to 22 formations in 35 seconds, completely separating between formations. Speed and control are essential. "There were 28 nations competing and most teams were getting scores of 24 or 25," Pilcher says of the August championships. "Then we saw our 28 and knew we had finally done it." Pilcher and Bobo met through the Tech sport parachute club and, along with teammates Kyle Collins, ME 95, MS AE 03, and David van Greuningen, Arch 96, won three collegiate four-man free-fall national championships. "After graduation, we continued competing and dreaming of one day representing the United States in the world championships," Pilcher says. More than 30,000 jumps since their college days, Pilcher and Bobo and their Team USA teammates were crowned world champions. > »

Tragic Anniversary

> > I N I OC US

With his prize Speed Graphic camera and five flashbulbs in his pocket, amateur photographer Arnold Hardy, a 23year-old lab assistant in the physics department at Georgia Tech, was at the scene of the Winecoff Hotel in downtown Atlanta on Dec. 7, 1946. Sixty years ago it was the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history, killing 119 people. Hardy used his last flashbulb to capture this photo of a woman leaping from the hotel. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Hardy, Cls 50, is fc^ retired from Hardy Manufacturing Co. and lives in Stone Mountain, Ga. Sam Heys, coauthor of "The Winecoff Fire: The Untold Story of America's Deadliest Hotel Fire," identified the woman in a Winter 1993 Tech Topics article as Daisy McCumber, who survived the 11-story jump. The 93-year-old building that housed the Winecoff Hotel is scheduled to reopen this year as the boutique-style - Ellis Hotel. >Âť

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

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>>INFOCUS

Flying for the Future Georgia Tech researchers have conducted successful test flights of a hydrogen-powered unmanned aircraft believed to be the largest to fly on a proton exchange membrane fuel cell using compressed hydrogen. Although the power output is about that of a conventional lightbulb, the project advances fuel cell technology and generates industry interest. "A fuel cell aircraft is more compelling than just a lab demonstration," explains David Parekh, the Georgia Tech Research Institute's deputy director and founder of the Center for Innovative Fuel Cell and Battery Technologies. "It's also more demanding. With an airplane, you really push the limits for durability, robustness, power density and efficiency." Such fuel cells could power smaller, slower vehicles like unmanned aerial vehicles, which could be used to track hurricanes, patrol borders and conduct general reconnaissance. And fuel cells emit no pollution.

"We are laying the groundwork in design development that others can use to develop hydrogen-powered aircraft," says Dimitri 4 Mavris, Boeing professor in advanced aerospace systems analysis in the School of Aerospace Engineering.

"By documenting the technical challenges we've encountered — as well as our solutions — we provide a baseline for others to follow." > » Photo: Gary Meek

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Thomas Bradley and Reid Thomas go through the procedure ot starting the Georgia Tech fuel cell aircraft prior to a test flight at the Atlanta Dragway.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

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Georgia Tech Alutnni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

Tech a Top University for Biotech Transfer

16

Georgia Tech is one of the top universities in the world for technology transfer and a top producer of startup companies, according to a biotechnology study conducted by the Milken Institute.

Tech was ranked fourth for startup companies, 11th overall for technology transfer (bringing technologies from the lab to market) and eighth for patents filed. Tech also ranked ninth in number of patents in 2005, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In 1997, Georgia Tech and Emory University jointly formed an interdisciplinary department of biomedical engineering.

"Our unique relationship with Emory, coupled with our strategic, growing investment in biotechnology and a supportive environment for bringing research from the lab into commercial use, make Tech a top contributor to biotechnology innovation worldwide," says President Wayne Clough.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

More than 50 companies have been created based on technology developed at Georgia Tech since 1990. In 2004, companies that had graduated from the Advanced Technology Development Center employed 5,500 people and generated $1.7 billion in revenues, according to a recent economic impact study. The planned Technology Enterprise Park, located just south of the Georgia Tech campus, will provide space designed specifically for bioscience and technology companies leaving the incubation stage. "Great science leads to great commercial opportunities, but these biotech companies need a lot of support and space to get their businesses up and running," says Lee Herron, ATDC's general manager of biosciences. "Tech provides a supportive environment for these companies to grow â&#x20AC;&#x201D; at both the incubation and post-incubation stages." GT

August 30-September 10

Sicily: TiumninA &nt( Mm<(e.lt<r September 8-19

Zxylorinq Vietnam September 19-October 2 CardioMEMS, a company formed from Georgia Tech intellectual property, is one of many biotech startup success stories. The company recently won approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market its first commercial product, the EndoSure sensor, an implantable device that monitors blood pressure in aneurysm patients.

Spain: September 21-October 2

Irdanph TUtlunny <vn<( %illtorntvj September 28-October 6 For additional information on these tours and others, check out our web site at www.gtalumni.orc or contact Martin Ludwig, Director of Travel, at 404-894-0758, 800-GT-ALUMS or martinJudwig@aiumnl.gatech.edu

Georgia loch Alumni TrÂŤ veI

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

TECH NOTES One of the Best Academic Places to Work "We strive to create an environment that nurtures young faculty and encourages creative thinking from our faculty so they can produce innovative research that will enrich their fields, their students and the Institute."

Readers of The Scientist magazine ranked Georgia Tech as one of the top 15 places to work in academia in the United States.

"Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of people across this institution, Georgia Tech is considered a leader within the University System of Georgia in delivering high-quality customer service. Those efforts were validated by the readers of The Scientist. A well-managed institution was considered one of the most important factors in the ranking," says President Wayne Clough.

Tech ranked 11th in the survey, which The Scientist conducted by posting a Web-based questionnaire and inviting readers and registrants on its site to respond. Participants had to identify themselves as tenured or tenure-track life scientists working in academia or other noncommercial research organizations. More than 1,600 responses were evaluated. The magazine ranked 58 institutions from the United States, seven from Canada and 10 from the United Kingdom.

"I'm especially pleased to learn that our faculty think so highly of Georgia Tech as a place to teach and conduct research," says Provost Gary Schuster.

Dean of Students Urges Dialogue

John Stein has officially replaced Gail DiSabatino as assistant vice president and dean of students.

Stein, who came to Tech in 2002 as the director of Success Programs, had been serving as interim dean for more than six months while a job search was conducted after DiSabatino's departure from the Institute. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Gary Schuster "I see it as my mission to carry on the historiTech provost cal legacy and good work the former deans have done over time," says Stein. "Floyd Field focused on the Greeks, [George] Griffin established the fund to help students who were experiencing some crisis or emergency and needed help to get them through it, [James] Dull worked on integration and DiSabatino helped Tech meet the needs of women."

One area of need that Stein is working to meet is that of Tech's second-year students.

John Stein intends to carry on the legacy of previous deans, including George Griffin.

"We need to place more focus on the sophomore year," he says. "We do a great job with the freshman experience, but sophomore year is a transition year. They're low on the totem pole: last to get housing, last to get courses, not as much support from the administration. Sophomores say that the second year is the first time they have to navigate Tech on their own."

Stein also is focused on promoting intellectual discussion outside of the classroom.

"Tech students are the brightest population of students I've worked with and they have tremendous potential to transform Tech and the world beyond. But if something is absent on this campus it's dialogue," he says. "We have such a multifaceted student body that at times the students don't know how to talk to each other and don't know how to talk with people who are different from them."

The Finding Common Ground series was established to help students learn how to be com-

18

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

Photo: Caroline Joe

fortable when dealing with their differences and engage in discussion and disagreements constructively. Stein was instrumental in working with students to get the series off the ground.

"The best solutions arise when students initiate things and have the support of the administration/' he says. "It's my job to help them do that."

New President Leads Lorraine Yves Berthelot, a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering serving as director of Georgia Tech Lorraine, has assumed additional duties as president at the Metz, France, campus.

Berthelot was asked by the board of directors of Georgia Tech Lorraine to fill the vacancy left when Jean-Lou Chameau resigned as provost to head the California Institute of Technology. Gary May, chair of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was appointed to the board. Board members represent France's local authorities, such

as the city of Metz and the region of Lorraine, as well as Georgia Tech.

Berthelot will oversee administrative, operational and financial responsibilities for all research and academic programs at Georgia Tech Lorraine and coordinate operational relations with local and national institutions in France. He also will play a key role in the strategic development of Georgia Tech Lorraine, implementing a vision for its growth in collaboration with administrators and faculty in Atlanta and Europe.

The appointment comes at a time when Georgia Tech Lorraine is taking steps toward implementation of its five-year strategic plan.

Established in 1990, Georgia Tech Lorraine offers undergraduate and graduate courses taught in English in electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering and computer science.

Georgia Tech Lorraine seeks to double enrollment by 2011.

A growth plan recommends renovating > Âť

"GT Lorraine is poised for substantial growth in the next few years. Such growth must be thoughtfully planned." â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Yves Berthelot President Georgia Tech Lorraine

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

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>>TECHNOTES Author, poet, actress, teacher, playwright and civil rights activist Maya Angelou traveled across the country by bus to speak to the Georgia Tech community on Nov. 15 at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum.

Poet, playwright, "Los Angeles to Atlanta, Georgia, is a fair actress and activist step on a bus. When I say I'm glad to be here, I Maya Angelou visits mean it," said Angelou to the laughter and Tech's 'composers'

Promises, Possibilities for Planet

By Leslie Overman

applause of the more than 4,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni and guests who had gathered for the speech. Angelou, who prefers the privacy of her own bus, has not boarded an airplane for nearly eight years.

Angelou's address served as the finale to the Finding Common Ground program, a student-led initiative designed to create a civil dialogue and discussion among Georgia Tech students with various backgrounds and perspectives.

"I'm happy to be in the presence of composers," Angelou said, "at an institution of higher education, which in its deepest, most profound dream means to be a composer. Composing possibilities and promises for young men and women. Making promises and possibilities for our country and for the world. That is what Georgia Tech is. And that's what you are."

Angelou urged students to not only become composers of their own lives but also to develop the courage to make an impact on the lives of others.

"Tike that trip. See what can happen when you decide to become, take the responsibility of, becoming a composer. Having the courage to compose your lives so that you can be an inspiration. You can create the light and shine on people who may not be like you. Who may call God a different name, if they call a god at all. Who might eat the same foods but prepared differently. Just imagine."

T E C H NO I I S > >

the Georgia Tech Lorraine building infrastructure and acquiring new facilities in advanced materials, secure networks and computer science.

Georgia Tech Lorraine plans to take advantage of its strategic location in northeast France by seeking greater international collaborations. "We want to be recognized as one of the very best models for an international presence of a United States university in Europe," Berthelot says.

Partners in Pediatric Care Georgia Tech and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta have established the Center for Pediatric Outcomes and Quality to develop and distribute treatment technologies.

The center, launched with $5 million in donor funding as well as investments by Tech and Children's Healthcare, is a unit within the Health Systems Institute, a Georgia Tech/Emory partnership working with local, regional and national health care organizations.

"CPOQ will apply the latest technologies and methods from biomedical engineering, computer science, industrial engineering, management and other disciplines to solve problems associated with delivering quality care to children," says director Paula Edwards, IE 95, PhD 06.

"Through the involvement of Children's, CPOQ has access to clinical and operational resources in both the inpatient and outpatient care environments, enabling us to tackle problems that address the entire life cycle of patient care — from preventive medicine to acute care to long-term care for chronic conditions," she says.

Planned projects include human-computer interaction techniques designed to optimize usability and maximize acceptance of an electronic medical record system and the use of biomedical engineering techniques to reduce costs and improve outcomes for neonatal patients on lifesaving heart and lung support.

Winning Sustainable Home Design Assistant Georgia Tech professor Michael Gamble's firm, G+G Architects, took first prize in the Kendeda competition calling for a sustainable home that could be built in Atlanta with a budget of $125,000.

The competition was sponsored by Chairs Community Housing, Southface Energy Institute

and the Atlanta Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

G+G's winning entry, which will be constructed in the Grant Park neighborhood in Atlanta, was designed to create a variety of indoor and outdoor public, social and private spaces.

"The living room is the nexus of all activities in the house," says Gamble. "It interacts with every space on the site, from public to private."

The firm designed movable wall panels throughout the house to accommodate a variety of family sizes and social arrangements. The roof, made of recycled metal, directs the flow of rainwater to on-site storage tanks. Ramps instead of stairs take up the grade from the house to a garden and a grove.

"The private backyard is enclosed on three sides by the house and is configured in such a way as to preserve the existing grove of trees," says Gamble. "The grove functions as the coolest outdoor area of the site and one of the most private. And rainwater, stored in the cisterns, distributes water to the vegetable garden via drip lines."

Engineering Ranks for Hispanics Hispanic Business magazine has ranked the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech as one of the nation's top 10 engineering graduate schools for Hispanic students. Tech's engineering school held the number three spot this year.

"The College of Engineering is working harder than ever to ensure that Hispanic students can excel at Georgia Tech," says Don Giddens, dean of the College of Engineering. "With programs such as the Goizueta Foundation fellowships and scholarships, Georgia Tech maintains its long-standing commitment to the Hispanic community."

Since 2001, the Goizueta Foundation, established by the late Coca-Cola Co. CEO Roberto C. Goizueta, has contributed more than $6.5 million to recruitment and retention of I lispanic students at the graduate and undergraduate levels through scholarships and fellowships.

Support from the foundation in 2004 allowed Tech to hire a program director, Jorge Breton, to support Hispanic recruiting and administer the scholarships. This fall Tech awarded 53 Goizueta Foundation-funded scholarships and fellowships totaling $220,578. >»

"This [sustainable house] is a big step in the right direction for Atlanta — environmentally sensitive, affordable, work force housing.

We liked the competition brief the first time we read it —really challenging. The discussions around the subject of health and the environment continue to influence all of our projects."

— Michael Gamble Assistant professor of architecture

G e o r g i a T e c h Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

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>>>TECHNOTES

"This [ranking for graduating Hispanic engineers] is a manifestation of Georgia Tech's emphasis on placing resources to create the right environment, the right mixture of faculty and support staff, and it's a sign of our commitment to welcoming students of Hispanic origin and making sure they feel comfortable at Tech."

— Carlos Santamarina Professor of civil and environmental engineering

Hispanic students meet, left to right, Santiago Quintero, Ana Ortiz, Carta Meyer, Andrea Rodriguez and Lucas Posada.

"We are being recognized for our continuing commitment to recruit and retain a diverse student population, including Hispanic engineers," says J. Carlos Santamarina, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Goizueta Foundation faculty chair.

The number of Hispanic students is growing at the undergraduate level as well. This past fall

Hispanics entering the freshman class grew 24 percent over 2005. Since 2001, the number of Hispanic freshmen has jumped 179 percent.

The ranking also cited student-support organizations such as the Spanish Speaking Organization, La Unidad Latina, Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, GT

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

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A Vintage Career Ken Laird cultivates a lifelong journey out of a Napa Valley vacation

By Joseph P. Irwin Photographs by Michael A. Schwarz

he Napa Valley of

Georgia Tech," Laird says, adding that he also liked the "big-name California has sports that Georgia Tech had." emerged over the He arrived on cafnpus in 1953 past 30 years as one and studied mechanical engineerof the finest areas on m ing for the next four years with Earth for growing grapes and makthe intent of graduating on time and getting out into the world. ing world-class wine. The next time "All I wanted to do was get you pour a glass offine cabernet out and get to work," says Laird, saiwignon, you might just be enjoywho joined the Air Force ROTC ing the fruits — literally — of the while at Tech With hopes of hard work of a Georgia Tech alumKen and Gail Laird married when he was a Georgia Tech becoming a pilot.

Laird also played baseball at nus. student. Married more than 50 years, they have reared four children — and a world-class vineyard.

Tech for two years under coach Joe Ken Laird, ME 57, and his Pittard. But most importantly of all, fa mi ly have been growing grapes he met and married his wife, Gail, for the finest winemakers in the as a Tech sophomore. He recalls that Gail worked full time at valley for more than 30 years. It's a great story from a lot of Pure Oil Co. in downtown Atlanta and made $210 monthly angles, not the least of which is the old adage "the harder you while he went to Tech. "We were able to make it by on that." work, the luckier you get."

Laird was born in Virginia to a tobacco-farming family. , After he graduated inT957, Laird was called in by the Air As a young man his family moved to Amityville, Long .

Force and did his pilot training in Moultrie, Ga., then was Island, in New York, and he finished his secondary education transferred to San Antonio and finally to Tucson, Ariz. At that there a year early. He'd always been good at math and time, the Air Force required three years of aotive duty and thought he wanted to be an engineer. He was accepted and then five years of inactive duty. Laird did his three years in enrolled initially in the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy but the Air Force and then moved into the private sector. decided after six months that it wasn't the'right place for him.

His first job coming out of the service was as a sales engiMe decided to enroll at Georgia Tech. neer for Union Carbide in Los Angeles. The Lairds spent the next six years in Los Angeles and then were transferred back1 "I always set my sights high. I wanted to go to the numto Atlanta when he was named regional manager. The > » ber one engineering school in the country and to me that was / Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

young family lived in Dunwoody, which, Laird describes as "out in the country in the mid-'60s."

After 18 months in Atlanta, they were transferred to Philadelphia and then to New York (fity, where Laird was the national sales manager. Laird says this was ''the beginning of the end" for his career with Union Carbide. His two-hour commute from Marchon, N.J., to the offices on Park Avenue took two train rides and a bus ride or a walk and, of course, the reverse oh the way home. The commute was brutal and after a few months, Laird knew that it was time to move on.

The family had loved California and he and Gail wanted to move the family back there.

Union Carbide had a spot for Laird in its electronics division in Los Angeles but while the move was under way, a I recruiter from Heidrick & Struggles called about an opportunity in San Francisco for a French company called Air Liquide that provided industrial gases. Laird took the job as vice president of marketing for the United States and became the "company American."

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/ Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

While he enjoyed the job, Laird had always viewed hihv self as an entrepreneur. An opportunity came along in Phoenix for Laird to buy a struggling gas-distribution company so he resigned from Air Liquide and made the purchase.

In the meantime, however, the family had taken a camping trip to Napa-Bothe State Park.

"In 1970, about a month after we got to San Francisco, we packed the kids and the dog in the Oldsmobile station wagon, attached the camper and went camping," he says, remembering crossing the southern bridge over ihe Napa River, where he "had kind of a religious experience. I remember it to this day I said to Gail, T think I like this.'"

T

hus begahlhe journey of a lifetime. The Lairds found

a real estate agent in the valley and began looking at property. They came back a couple of months later and found a 70-acre farm in Calistoga, Calif., on the northern end of the valley that had 15 acres of old vines but was Âť mostly planted in plum trees.

Laird had the plum trees removed and began planting grapes.

He asked a winemaker in the valley named Robert Mondavi, who had built his winery there in the late '60s, if he could grow grapes for Him. Mondavi walked the land with Laird and then gave him a 20-year contract to provide grapes to the winery. With the contract in hand, Laird went to a local bank and got financing to launch Bayview Vineyards.

He says he didn't know anything about viticulture at the time but was committed to making it work. He and Gail took, the kids to Calistoga every weekend to work the farm, including tying the vines on the stakes. From the beginning Bayview's success has always been rooted in working hand in hand with the wineries to produce the finest fruit possible.

After purchasing the gas-distribution company, Laird was commuting from the Bay Area to Phoenix every week.

Mis plan was to make the firm profitable and then sell it.

After commuting for several months he decided to hire someone to run the ranch in Calistoga and move the family to

Phoenix. At this point, the Lairds had four children. The family wasn't happy in Phoenix so they moved back to northern California and for another four years, Laird commuted and ran the gas-distribution company, finally turning it around and selling it for a profit to Air Liquide.

In 1980, he moved the family to the Napa Valley to become a full-time grower. During the '80s and early '90s land prices were still reasonable enough to enable him to buy land and make a profit growing grapes. He acquired numerous tracts of vineyards around the valley and continued to cultivate his relationships with the major wineries.

G

rape growing isn't the easiest endeavor one-can undertake. Complexities of climate, soil and water availability all play a role. It takes eight years for a vineyard to mature and produce a full crop. Year one you prepare the soil. Year two you plant the vines. Year three the vines grow up the stakes. In year four youvget a very small ' crop. A good yield on a per-acre basis is five tons. And, > Âť

/ Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

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27

Laird says climate and soil have made California's Napa Valley one of the world's finest wine-producing regions.

Still the grape varietal must match the land itself

cabernet down in of course, grape the Cameras but prices fluctuate it's too cold and with supply and you'll never get demand. sugar*. You want to The Nafk match the soil Valley is about 60 with what you miles north of San think is going to Francisco and The Lairds — Ken, Gail and their children, Justin end Rebecca — opened a winery to complement their successful grape growing. The 250,000-case facility makes wine grow best there. runs about 30 for smaller vineyards as well as a high-end wine that bears the family name.

And you want to miles from the anticipate what the foot of the valley world will want — to the extent that you can," he says. to the northwest. It's bounded on both sides by mountains.

With the wild popularity of pinot noir from the recent The valley is bisected by the Napa River beginning at the movie "Sideways,"' Laird laughs and says he wishes he had head of the valley and continuing south until it empties into seen the movie five years ago, then he could have planted the San Pablo Bay of the greater San Francisco Bay. more pinot.'

The valley's elevation averages about 40 feet above sea level and rainfall averages about 24 inches annually most of Large wind machines are used to keep the frost off the it falling from December to March. The climate is moderate, grapes. The wind machines look like large propellers toweralthough growers do face frost as a challenge to the new ing over the vineyards; they mix the colder air near the grapes each year. The climate plays a big role in the success of ground with the warmer air above. Each jnachine can cover the valley but the soil is the real key. Napa's soils are a mixabout 10 acres of vines and will keep the tender new buds ture of gravelly loams to silty clays — all a result of Mother , from freezing during those periods of winter frost.

Nature's handiwork over geologic eons.

Drip irrigation is the predominant source of watering the vines. An emitter or two is placed at each root base. No water Within Napa there are microclimates that vary widely is wasted. Almost all runoff is collected from the winter rains based on rainfall, elevation, soil type and temperature. And each of these microclimates can produce distinctly different \ into private reservoirs and the growers use this water to drip irrigate the vines. The Laird Family Estate Winery is located fruit. Matching the grapes to be grown to the conditions is on about 210 acres of grapes that are grown using a combinaone of the keys to successful growing. tion of wells and the winery's waste pond, which goes * "Soils are the key thing. It's a fine balance though. You through a number of aeration and filtration cells until it's ' could put chardonnay in Calistoga if you want to but it won't ready to be used on the vines again. >» be very good because it's too hot there. You could put / Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

29

mm

In addition to making his own special wines, Laird supplies custom wines to 51 other companies. His company grows 9,000 tons of grapes on 2,000 prime acres.

T

business to grow he graves further. It would be bud in the a250,000-case early spring facility at which and grow all sumLaird could make mer lorig. Hand wine for smaller harvesting begins in Laird enjoys visiting with guests who come to sample his wines and discuss vineyards that mid-August and the complexities and pleasures of drinking it. Rozalinde and Michael Christodoulos. traveled from Atlanta to visit the Napa Valley vineyards on their second anniversary. didn't have the continues through capability to build early November. their own wineries and could serve one other important purThey pick champagne grapes first and move on to the higher pose â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to produce Laird Family Estate wines, a high-end, sugar content fruit later. smtill-volume operation that wquld bear the family moniker.

They handpick, rather than mechanically harvest, Laird Laird employed Paul Hobbs, one of the finest winemakers in says, because the wineries believe that handpicking means the valley, to work with him in crafting the family wines. better fruit and they insist on this method. Most of the picking is done by Hispanic migrant workers who come and go In 1998, the unique green copper-roofed, pyramid-topped with the seasons, although many are now staying because of building rose up from a vineyard on the west side of Highthe available work in the valley off season and the fact that way 29 at Oak Knoll Avenue.

Laird and other growers are able to offer affordable housing.

Laird's customers didn't object to his new venture, he says. "Their concern was whether they would still get the Working closely with the wineries is a hallmark of fruit that they needed. I assured them that they would."

Bayview Vineyards. Quality, supply and pricing are fundamental to success in any business and the same is true for Laird. The Lairds have used formulas to calculate pricing for oday the Laird Family Estate Winery has 51 customers the upcoming crop based on historical data provided from for whom the company custom crushes grapes and the Crush Report published annually by the University of makes the wines, which are aged in French oak barCalifornia at Davis, which shows prices and yields of all rels, bottled and labeled, then shipped to.distributors nationgrapes grown and sold in California. These models have prowide. The famiiy-owned-and-operated company grows vided good returns and good fruit for Laird's customers. grapes on nearly 2,000 acres of prime Napa Valley real estate yielding 9,000 tons of grapes for wine production every year.

And his customer list reads like a "Who's Who" of When asked about what his education at Georgia Tech California winemaking: Robert Mondavi, Beaulieu Vineyards, meant to him, Laird says, "This school gave me what I am Cakebread Cellars, Beringer Wine Estates, Kendall-Jackson, right now. I must say Lcouldn't have gotten something simiChateau St. Jean, Far Niente, Duckhorn, Rombauer, lar if I had gone somewhere else like Miami or Penn or Schamsberg, Merryvale, Paul Hobbs and many others.

Dartmouth. I'm in a very special place and, I wouldn't be here In 1997 the Lairds decided to build their own Winery and if it weren't for Georgia Tech." GT a unique concept emerged that set the stage for the family

T

i Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

31

>>PACESETTERS

Wired for Success After years in the technology arena, Kenn Walker still loves seeing 'how this stuff really works

By Kimberly Link-Wills

Only a Georgia Tech ball cap hints at Kenn Walker's identity.

The chief technologist for Gateway is not dressed to impress.

"I'm not here to make a fashion plate statement. I'm an engineer. I like to be comfortable when I work. I like the fact that I get to wear blue jeans every day," says Walker, ICS 86, MS Mgt 88.

His work space is equally unassuming — a cluttered cubicle in a large, nondescript room at Gateway's headquarters in Irvine, Calif.

"We're building a lab where much of this stuff will disappear to," he says, clearing a spot for his thermos. "Once we get past the milestones around [Microsoft Windows] Vista and some of the testing that I've been pulled into, there won't be this sort of mad rush. This is a Class 1 event that is about to strike our industry in terms of the OS. It's a dramatic change for people on a bunch of different levels."

Walker points to a dry erase board crammed with a jumble of words and numbers. "These are performance scores, notes on a patent application, identification information on a cable card, a contact at a company, information on who to talk to about an expired password, keeping track of who has a card for accessing the Internet through a cellular network so no matter where you are you can get broadband ..."

Nowhere does Walker display the award he received from Black Engineer magazine as one of the 100 most important African Americans working in technology.

32

"They sent me a plaque. It's at home somewhere. I don't gravitate toward worrying about honors and trappings and all the rest of that," he says. "I felt honored they would consider the things that I do interesting and worthy.

Hopefully I can inspire other folks to look at technology as a viable career and an opportunity to contribute."

At Gateway, Walker works with "any sort of new technology that could affect any part of our product line — more specifically, anything that crosses an engineering, technical, functional boundary," he says. "It's my job to say whether we're prepared for it, how to prepare for it to try to build a sense of the technology itself but also the strategy of how to implement it to get it into products quickly and efficiently."

Walker, whose career has included stints at Apple, Radius and Philips, was lured to Gateway from the Silicon Valley. "I had a number of friends here who were struggling with where to take their consumer electronics business.

The guy who was responsible for all the product development at the time, someone I had worked with years ago at Apple, said he didn't know anyone who knew more about TVs or MP3 players or the like than me. He said, 'Why don't you come down and talk to people?'

"It was an interesting and fun match. Unfortunately, it was only a couple of months after I got here that the executives decided to make a change in the strategic decision around consumer elec-

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

tronics products, so I only got to ship a couple of products.

Fortunately, I had made enough of an impression on the organization that they said, 'While we may not be doing TVs, we're not losing him.' They found another role, which essentially evolved into being the chief technologist. It's a fun job because it's not highly structured, because I get to touch so many different things," Walker says.

In the spring of 2004, shortly before Walker joined the company, Gateway closed its stores, designed as "destinations" where PC users could learn about the latest and greatest innovations — and then place their orders.

"Gateway saw value in the massive retail footprint of thirdparty retailers versus building on its own retail infrastructure," he says. "We closed our stores and turned around and put our product on the retailers' shelves — at Best Buy, at Circuit City, at Staples.

"When we closed our stores — we had 188 stores nationwide — you could find Gateway products at over 8,800 locations nationwide. At the end of the day, it was probably a pretty good trade," he says, a smile stretching across his face.

Walker made no trade-offs when it came to his college education. He grew up in metro Atlanta and remembers watching Six Flags' fireworks show from his back porch. He graduated high school from Woodward Academy

and was accepted at MIT, Princeton and Georgia Tech but chose the Institute "quite frankly because of the President's Scholarship Program."

Walker was one of six scholars selected in the program's second year. "It was a great program all the way around. It was the commitment to academics, but with that it was a commitment to people having a broad range of skills. It was: Will you be a leader on campus? Will you be a leader when you step away from what Georgia Tech has taught you? How will you approach the world? Will you be one-dimensional or will you be multidimensional?

"That sort of focus on the multidimensionality of the student resonated with me. I think I was extremely well prepared for the real world. It wasn't pure theory about why something occurred, We learned why, but we also learned why it was important," he says.

Georgia Tech also afforded Walker an opportunity to play football. "I walked on to play for Bill Curry and gave it my best shot. The reality is, whereas I think I had a decent heart for the game, I wasn't quite there. I went into some strong off-season training after my first season to really try to give it another go," he says.

Walker sustained an injury that a doctor told him could cause lifelong problems if he continued playing football.

Walker moved to the sidelines permanently.

"Bill Curry and his staff were

equally as caring about their players as [President's Scholarship Program founder Jo] Baker was on the other side. It was a great juxtaposition. They invited me to find other ways to contribute to the success of the football program — come in and break down film, work in the office — so I spent my undergraduate time working for Coach Curry as an administrative assistant and apparently did well enough that he offered me a graduate assistant scholarship to help coach the team and that's how I went on to get my master's," Walker says.

"Actually, the counterpoint of an undergraduate degree in technology and a master's in management has been extremely helpful."

Technology continues to tie Walker to Georgia Tech and Yellow Jackets football. He watches as many games as he can in California.

"I've got three TiVos, three media center PCs, a Replay TV, a couple of extenders. I have multiple ways to do television content or to get multimedia in almost every room in the house. That way I can see what this stuff really works like when you live with it.

I've found a lot of bugs in a lot of things over the years trying to actually use them.

"It bothers my wife, but she also recognizes that it's something I find fun to do. Either that or she's got to deal with me pulling out the power tools. The house either becomes a shop or it's a computer lab," Walker says. "I enjoy technology. There's no question about that." G T

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

33

BACK TO NATURE

By Neil B. McGahee Photography: Caroline Joe

Anything we can do, Mother Nature seems to have done it first — and better That's why researchers from Georgia Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design are turning to the natural world for solutions to real-world problems.

N

atural systems must cope with environmental changes and innovations to survive/' Jeannette Yen, CBID director and professor of biology, says. "Biologically inspired design or biomimetics allow us to take ideas from nature and incorporate them in modern technologies such as engineering, design and logistics."

The concept of biomimetics is very old — Leonardo da Vinci observed birds when building his unsuccessful flying machine in 1496 — but has gathered momentum recently due to advances in technologies.

"Perhaps the best known result of biologically inspired design is the development of Velcro," Yen says. "In the 1940s, a Swiss scientist was removing burrs from his dog when he realized how the hooks of the burrs clung to the fur." The discovery inspired him to create the unique two-sided fastener.

Yen and biology associate professor Marc Weissburg, co-director of CBID, had known each other for years through their mutual interest in marine biology. Weissburg was researching marine animals' ability to use their sense of smell to find food or a mate while Yen was studying plankton's ability to find a mate through similar olfactory location.

"In 2005, President Wayne Clough mentioned to Yen, who serves on the faculty exec-

34

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

utive committee, that Tech was interested in adopting innovative programs as part of a 10year plan," Weissburg says. "It was one of those 'aha' moments."

An informal proposal was presented to Clough, who had them contact Vice Provost for Research Charles Liotta. In May 2005, CBID received a three-year grant to develop interdisciplinary research within the Colleges of Science and Engineering.

"Our research naturally lends itself to working with engineers," Weissburg says.

"That's why we're at Tech. I came here because I knew that engineers could help me understand biology in a better way. There's not enough time in my life for me to learn as much about fluid dynamics as they do or for them to learn as much about biology as 1 do.

Given the natural connections, we decided to develop a center that would promote collaborations between engineers and biologists."

Some of the projects at the year-old center include efforts to develop underwater acoustic sensors based on a fish ear, Web-hosting techniques based on honeybee foraging patterns, underwater tracking systems based on crustacean olfactory navigation, nanostructures based on those produced by marine diatoms, durable, no-fade colors based on the study of butterfly wings and memory studies based on worm observation. >»

Jeannette Yen, director of the CBID, says the potential for collaboration between engineers and biologists "is why we're at Georgia Tech."

DANCES WITH BEES

A

1990 study of honeybee behavior by industrial and systems engineering professor Craig Tovey may prove to be the blueprint for more effective Web-hosting methods.

"John Vande Vate [executive director of the executive master's in international logistics program] and I had been looking for a research project we could do together," Tovey says. "We wanted to find a way to get a factory full of robots to self-coordinate.

"We thought if we could learn from biologists how bees self-coordinate, we could design a good system for robots based on bees' behavior."

The study resulted in a

Professors Peter Rogers and Minami Yoda, right, and doctoral student Charlotte Kotas are studying the way fish "hear" in order to develop a compact acoustic sensor that can locate and identify underwater objects.

SEEING SOUND

I

s it possible that fish "hear" by using their ears to form images of flow patterns much like animals use their eyes to see objects?

Mechanical engineering professors Minami Yoda, a fluid dynamicist, and Peter H. Rogers, an acoustician, are researching the auditory retina, a concept based on motion sensors found in a fish's ear.

"The auditory retina is a hypothesis about how fish distinguish the direction of a sound source," Yoda says. "We know terrestrial animals gauge direction by using the difference in the arrival time of sound between their two ears. But the distance between a fish's ears is no more than a centimeter and the speed

36

of sound in water is almost five times faster than in air, so fish must determine direction in a different way."

A fish ear is divided into three parts, each containing an otolith, a small, dense stonelike structure, situated above a membrane covered with hair cells similar to those in our ears.

"When I was at the Naval Research Lab in the 1980s, I was surprised to learn there were tens of thousands of hair cells in each otolithic organ for no apparent reason," Rogers says. "When an underwater sound wave approaches the fish, the hairs wave back and forth while the otolith is still."

Yoda says, "It occurred to us that the hair cells could visual-

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

ize the three-dimensional flow patterns around the otoliths â&#x20AC;&#x201D; much like a breeze passing over a wheat field â&#x20AC;&#x201D; hence the need for so many hair cells."

The patterns contain information about the direction, pitch and volume of the sound. By converting those acoustic signals into spatial patterns, sounds are recognized much in the same way the brain translates retinal patterns into mental pictures.

Rogers, Yoda and doctoral student Charlotte Kotas are conducting research for the Navy to study these flow patterns with the long-term goal of developing a compact acoustic sensor that can locate and identify underwater objects using the "pictures" created by sound.

Craig Tovey studied honeybees to find effective Web-hosting methods.

paper and not much else until 15 years later when a visiting doctoral student approached Tovey with a Web-hosting problem, "As soon as he described the problem, I saw the similarities to my research and recommended a biomimetic application," Tovey says, "Web-hosting sites operate huge banks of computers for customers that want a Web presence but don't want to maintain it. For instance, if you order from Lands' End or contact your bank online, you're not talking to a computer there; you're talking to a host.

"These hosts must allocate server usage among their clients to maximize revenue. If you have a dozen or more clients and you get paid based on the number of their customers served, server allocation optimization becomes very difficult."

As an example, Tovey says, perhaps 120 of a host's 500 computers are allocated to a local weather service and a storm is looming. Suddenly there are thousands of hits â&#x20AC;&#x201D; far more than 120 computers can handle. But if other computers allocated for retailing were very slow, you could realign 80 of them to maximize the weather channel and make a lot more money.

Honeybees use the same principle to survive.

"A honeybee colony's logistics problems are very similar to the Web host's," Tovey says. "The bees must collect nectar and store honey during the warm months to ensure their survival, especially in the North, If they fail to store enough honey, the queen freezes and the hive is done, "Just as it would be inefficient to concentrate all the host's

computers on one customer, it is inefficient for all of the colony's foragers to collect from the same flower patch. Some patches are more productive than others and in order to maximize nectar intake, the colony must decide how many bees will forage at each flower patch.

That's where the dancing begins.

"Scout bees are sent to search for nectar," Tovey says.

"When they return, they begin what is called a 'waggle dance.'"

In a sort of apiarian hokeypokey, the bees begin moving in a straight line, wiggling their thoraxes and buzzing loudly, turn 180 degrees, then make another 180-degree turn.

"The number of waggle turns signals the distance to the flower patch," Tovey says. "The perpendicular lines tell the direc-

tion of the patch and the scent given off by the dancing bees identifies the type of nectar."

Using that information, other forager bees search for patches. If a bee fills its stomach and returns quickly, it dances for its patch more frequently and more bees are recruited. Conversely, if the patch is not productive, the bee's return to the hive will take longer, the patch dances will be less frequent and the patch's share of foragers will diminish.

The bee corresponds to a computer in the host site; the patches are the Web sites hosted and the bee's travel is analogous to the host serving a hit at the Web site.

"This is so obvious you don't readily see it," Tovey says. "But it's crucial because it means both bees and computers can take advantage of productive patches." >>>

CHEMICAL PLUME TRACKING

ssociate biology professor Marc Weissburg and j Don Webster, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, are studying marine animals to understand how they use chemical signals to track objects â&#x20AC;&#x201D; information that may be used to make robotic sensor systems for underwater vehicle navigation.

Weissburg, an animal behaviorist, discovered that when blue crabs get a whiff of potential

prey or a mate, they quickly pursue them using sensors on their legs to steer toward the odor.

"Animals are better trackers than the best humans," says Weissburg. "By understanding their tracking behavior and its relationship to the environment, we may be able to build devices that can accomplish the same task."

But odor signals are affected by environmental conditions, such as turbulence, which dilutes the odor, making it difficult for the crabs to follow the plume. To study the effects of turbulence,

Associate professors Marc Weissburg, left, and Don Webster are studying marine animals to learn how to develop robotic sensor systems for underwater navigation.

Georgia Tech Al.

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Webster, a fluid mechanics expert, uses an 80-foot-long flume.

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"We're trying to recreate conditions that mimic tidal channels in coastal estuaries," he says. "Working in a lab environment allows us to manipulate conditions mimicking a tidal pool in a way that can't be done in the field. We can manipulate conditions and observe changes and measure the changes precisely."

Webster mixes food odors with fluorescent dyes and measures the concentration and size of the odor patches as they move through the flume past the animals. The data records the animal's response to environmental

changes that can be adapted to technology development.

"Do we want sensors that respond to odor signals quickly like the blue crab but don't perform well in turbulent environments?" Weissburg asks. "Or do we want one that responds slower like a starfish but performs well in highly mixed plumes?"

As their research continues, Weissburg and Webster hope to use their understanding of chemical plume tracking to design underwater guidance systems capable of navigating changing environments.

"Our primary funding comes from the Navy," Webster says.

"They want to develop an autonomous vehicle — a robot — that can track plumes to locate a source of pollution in a shipyard or chemicals associated with land mines or unexploded ordnance and destroy them before a SEAL team ever enters a beachhead." »>

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Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

M

ore than 100,000 species of diatoms â&#x20AC;&#x201D; microscopic single-celled algae â&#x20AC;&#x201D; live in the Earth's oceans, lakes and rivers. Each species has a uniquely shaped outer skeleton and the ability to exactly reproduce the skeleton trillions of times â&#x20AC;&#x201D; just the ticket for the microscopic foundations necessary to build nanostructures.

"Diatoms have the incredible ability to make identical intricate glass structures from silica," says biochemistry professor Nils Kroger. "No one understands yet how it works but such precise 3-D structure formations exceed anything man can do."

Ken Sandhage are trying to learn how the structures are made and incorporate the knowledge into technological applications.

Kroger found that diatoms use unique protein molecules in the silica-formation process.

geoning field of nanotechnology.

"Nanotechnology is a big buzzword but there are limitations to the current synthetic methods used to process nanostructured materials and devices," says Sandhage.

"These proteins are very complex and completely different from the proteins of any other organism," he says. "If we can understand how the diatom proteins function, we may be able to tailor protein molecules to create diatom-like structures in test tubes."

"Nanostructures have to be precise, highly reproducible and cheap to make in large quantities and that's where nature excels.

Diatoms can reproduce trillions of intricate, three-dimensional structures daily in a volume the size of a swimming pool."

One drawback,

Such a finding would be a giant step in the bur-

Kroger and materials science and engineering professor

NATURE'S NANOTECHNOLOGISTS

Ken Sandhage, left, and Nils Kroger are studying diatoms to discover processes for building nanostructures.

or***

Sandhage says, is that diatoms don't produce shapes or chemistries that are specifically tailored for man-made devices.

"If we learn how they make their structures, perhaps we can manipulate their genetic code and induce them to make the shapes we want," he says.

"Furthermore, we have developed methods for altering the microshell chemistry while preserving the shape. By taking advantage of nature's reproductive capabilities and modifying them with man-made chemical processes, we open up a phalanx of electronic, optical, chemical and biomedical applications.'

CHASING BUTTERFLIES

S

cientists have been intrigued for years over how butterflies produce their dazzling colors. When professor of polymer, textile and fiber engineering Mohan Srinivasarao studied the morpho, a brilliant blue butterfly found in the southern United States and Central America, he discovered the creatures produced their shimmering shades of blue and green not with pigments but by light reflection.

"Structural color is produced by the interaction of light and a structural feature," Srinivasarao says. "Hundreds of thousands of tiny scales cover the morpho's wings like shingles on a roof and reflect

incident light by interacting with sub-wavelength structures on the individual scales. The scales function similarly to a light emitting device preventing light from being trapped inside the structure.

"The scales also have a specialized mirror material underneath them that reflects any fluorescent emission.

The result gives

the butterfly significant control of the direction the light is emitted."

"If we can determine the structural interaction that give morphos their color, we may be able to produce materials that won't fade. Imagine a 20-yearold car that looks just as shiny and new as the day it rolled off the showroom floor," Srinivasarao says.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

41

TOGGERING MEMORIES

A

worm, not much bigger than a hair, may provide clues into the way memories are formed and retained in the human brain.

Hang Lu, an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, wants to know how Caenorhabditis elegans — a common nematode found in most backyard gardens — is able to store and retrieve memories.

Why worms?

They may be the perfect research subjects.

"Worms have a very simple anatomy," Lu says. "Humans have more than a trillion neurons and lab rats have more than a billion. The nematode only has 302 neurons."

Lu tracks the neurons, which have been manipulated to produce fluorescent green proteins using a laser beam. She eliminates selected neurons in a live worm allowing her to study the worm's behavior after stimuli — in this case, bacterial foods — are introduced.

By introducing differing stimuli and carefully watching the worm's behavior, Lu can decipher which neurons shape behavior and form worm memory — information that may one day give scientists a better understanding of human memory disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

42

THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

B

iomimetics proponents say that recent discoveries are just the tip of an iceberg of knowledge to be gleaned from nature. Yen says the CBID faculty plans to integrate biologically inspired sensing, locomotion, materials, manufacturing systems and green architecture into Tech's curriculum to train a new generation of engineers and biologists to act as mediators between natural and built environments.

"We will see new materials produced using methods that

replicate small-scale variation in structure to give them unique qualities instead of the current method stressing largescale manufacturing of uniform materials," Weissburg says.

"We will rely on sensing systems that use specialized animalinspired algorithms to determine position or location from local information rather than an elaborate system that details every feature of the environment.

"Perhaps the biggest change will be the conversion from

thinking about our environment as open systems to a more biologically realistic idea based on closed ecological systems to provide sustainability," he says.

"We have always looked at the Earth as an infinite resource where we take and discard, suffering huge losses of energy, whereas natural organisms coordinate input and output to create complete ecological functions. Organisms are a big book of design solutions." GT Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

43

> >PACESETTERS

1 Knew I Would One Day Return'

Hawa Meskinyar, Arch 95, M CP 98, left her job in Washington, D.C, to return to her native Afghanistan, the country she and her family had fled more than two decades earlier, to help improve the lives of impoverished women and children.

Alumna Hawa Meskinyar honored for humanitarian projects in Afghanistan

Meskinyar, founder of the nonprofit humanitarian organization Join and Help Afghanistan Now, was named the 2006 outstanding alumna at the Women's Leadership Conference at Georgia Tech in November.

By Kimberly Link-Wills

Launched in 2001, JAHAN is run by Meskinyar and seven other volunteers divided between the United States and Afghanistan.

The acronym JAHAN stands for a word that means

world or universe in the Dari language of Afghanistan.

Meskinyar, the granddaughter of an Afghan diplomat, was 8 years old when she and her family fled the country after the communist invasion in 1979. Her mother had worked at the TV station in Kabul. Her father was a civil engineer. They moved from Pakistan to Germany and finally to the United States, where the family settled in Stone Mountain, Ga. "I remember fleeing Afghanistan," Meskinyar says. "I was not sure what was going on, but being a little girl, it seemed like an adventure at the time â&#x20AC;&#x201D; leaving my house in the middle of the night, riding horses, camels and tractors along the way, meeting strange and unfamiliar people, spending the night with the kochis [nomads]."

She worked as an urban designer and graphic specialist for the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta in 1995 and '96 and as a graduate research assistant at the Georgia Tech Economic Development Institute in 1997 and '98.

Meskinyar first went back to Afghanistan in late 2000. "I wanted to see what was really going on and not just rely on what the media was telling us," she says.

That trip prompted her to found JAHAN after her return to the United States.

"Ever since my family fled Afghanistan due to the Russian invasion, I knew I would one day return and somehow try to help those left behind," Meskinyar says. "After I visited Afghanistan during the Taliban rule, I realized more than ever that I had to do

something to help. It was partly a sense of responsibility and partly guilt. Why was I able to get away from all the misery and destruction when others were stuck behind and faced year after year of devastation, pain and suffering?

I felt that it was my turn to give back."

In 2002, she married childhood friend Nadim Amin, who had re-established family business ties in Afghanistan. A year later she quit her job as a program analyst for the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health and the couple moved to Afghanistan.

Meskinyar's husband heads the Afghanistan Resources Group.

She works as the general coordinator of clinics for International Relief and Development Inc. and donates her time to JAHAN, which

was designed to pair sponsors with needy children. A suggested monthly donation of $30 covers some living expenses and enables youngsters to go to school rather than beg on the streets to help their families survive.

On the organization's Web site, Meskinyar explains that she tried to come up with a standard form to provide information on the Afghani children in need. "I thought it would be nice for the sponsors to know a little about the interests, hobbies and aspirations of each child," she writes. "So I asked a little 10-year-old girl what she enjoyed or liked and she just stared at me blankly, not even knowing what to answer."

Meskinyar coaxed the child, asking if she wanted to be a teacher, doctor, nurse or baker.

"She looked up at me and in her

soft voice said, 'I'm not supposed to be anything. That's not the way things are here.'"

I'm the oldest child and my mother is not well, so I do all the work around our tent.

The Web site, www.jahan. org, also includes excerpts from letters written by children who have been sponsored through the organization. A child named Farida writes, "I am in the third grade and have the third best grade in my class. I used to sell matches and toilet paper with my sister Masooda in Share-now, but since I've been sick she has been going alone. Also, since I'm getting older, my mom does not want me to go anymore, so she is trying to learn to read and write so maybe she can help support us."

"I make really good tandori bread and I hope you will come and eat some of my bread one day," Leilema writes to her sponsor. "I hope to be a good seamstress one day."

A girl named Leilema says, "I have a great interest in school and learning, but the reason I'm not in school is because I have to take care of my entire family since

Meskinyar is trying to officially adopt Noor Din, a baby boy she has been caring for since his birth. "I have always wanted to adopt," she says. "I've felt that there are so many abandoned children that we should try to take care of as many of those as we can before having more children. I hope to have one and then adopt another two or three." G T

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Hawa Meskinyar returned to her homeland to found JAHAN, which stands for Join and Help Afghanistan Now. I HI She holds Noor Din, the child she is trying to adopt.

aazine â&#x20AC;˘ Wintei 2007

Tough Fairways Georgia Tech Club course ranks among most challenging

By Neil B. McGahee

I

f you have ever fantasized about playing golf with the pros, step right up to the first tee at the recently opened Georgia Tech Club within Echelon, a 230-home residential community in north Fulton County.

"This course is one of the most challenging courses you'll ever play," says former Tech golfer and Echelon resident Joey Dixon, Cls 87. "But it's very fair — no tricks. It has long fairways and beautiful championship-caliber greens."

The 7,558-yard golf course was designed by renowned golf course architect Rees Jones, designer of Hazeltine National, Pinehurst No. 2 and Baltusrol — all sites of past U.S. Opens — and Torrey Pines, site of the 2008 U.S. Open.

"From the professional tees it's the 12th toughest course in the country with a slope rating of 154. That's the degree of difficulty determined by the United States Golf Association — 155 is the maximum," says Tripp Shine, vice president of the Melrose Co., a devel-

oper of prestige golf communities.

Realtor and weekend golfer Mike Hickman, CE 89, says the course is a mental challenge as well as a physical one.

"I walked the course with Rees Jones when he was designing it," Hickman says. "I was most impressed that he looked at every hole from the perspective of golfers with varying skills. From the executive tees to the professional tees, he tried to make each golfer have to think and make a decision and not just grab a club and swing."

Shine says phase one of the development is nearly complete.

"We have sold 73 of 85 home sites, installed the golf course and set up a temporary clubhouse and we expect to have the rest of the homes in place by summer 2008," he says.

Other amenities include a clubhouse designed by Niles Bolton, Arch 68, a tennis facility designed by former U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion Stan Smith and a lifestyle center complete with pool, spa and fitness facility.

The club's licensing agreement with the Alumni and Athletic associations allows direct marketing access to alumni, boosters, supporters and friends. In return, Georgia Tech receives royalties from the sale of memberships and operating income.

"The opening of the Georgia Tech Club represents years of hard work on the part of many, many people," says Joseph P. Irwin, president of the Alumni Association. "And those efforts have paid off beautifully. The golf course is magnificent and we know that all those who play there or simply visit will enjoy the club enormously." GT

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

Engineer of Note Word of composer Vivek Maddala's talent gets out through silent movies

By Kimberly Link-Wills Color Photography: Stephanie Diani Additional Photographs Courtesy Vivek Maddala

V

ivek Maddala was developing audio technologies for cinematic applications when he tapped out a tango on his computer keyboard.

Maddala, EE 95, was one of 200 hopefuls to enter the inaugural Young Film Composers Competition in 2000 by writing music for a silent movie clip.

Maddala's "Tanguero," composed to accompany a Rudolph Valentino dance sequence in "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," won the grand prize, a one-shot deal to write the score for the modern-day release of the 1921 silent film "The Ace of Hearts" on Turner Classic Movies and on a Warner Brothers DVD compilation of Lon Chaney movies.

"I had no way to break into film scoring. It's a very exclusive club," Maddala says. "The Young Film Composers Competition is unusual, if not unique, in that it is a way to recognize someone solely based on the quality of their craft, not based on how much education they have, where they went to school, what their gender is, what their age is, what their ethnicity is, who they know. None of that is relevant.

"When you work as an engineer, generally if you're good at what you do you'll be able to find gainful employment. If you have an obnoxious personality or you smell bad, that can hurt your chances of getting a job, but if you have an engineering degree and you're good at your craft, supply and demand

48

is such that you can find work," Maddala says. "In entertainment, it's totally a privileged industry. There's no real infrastructure in place to be able to distinguish somebody who's good at their craft from somebody who's not. Anybody with a guitar and a computer can say, 'I'm a composer.' That doesn't mean they're any good."

Maddala acknowledges that he may be "more noticeable or distinguishable" than other Hollywood composers.

"It's possible that the fact that 1 went to this sort of nerdy engineering school and spent years honing my analytical skills helped mold me to have a different way of thinking and a different way of approaching people than a lot of people in the entertainment industry who didn't have that background," he says.

In a documentary about the Young Film Composers Competition included on "The Lon Chaney Collection" set of DVDs, lead judge Don Ray trumpets Maddala's "tremendous sense of life" and says Turner Classic Movies was lucky to find him.

SPEAKING FOR SILENT FILMS pparently, Turner and Warner Brothers executives agreed. Since acing the competition, Maddala has scored five more silent films, including the latest, director King Vidor's 1924 "Wild Oranges," which debuted on Turner Classic Movies in November.

A

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

The 90-minute symphonic composition was recorded and performed live, with Maddala holding the baton, by the Third Angle New Music Ensemble, a chamber orchestra comprised of core members of the Oregon Symphony and the group Pink Martini, at Lincoln Hall in Portland.

Maddala was not a silent movie aficionado when he became the composer of choice for the reincarnations of "The Patsy," "The Mysterious Lady," "The Flag" and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Ring."

"I didn't really like silent movies.

They were hard to watch. In a lot of them the drama was overwrought and the characters were one-dimensional cardboard cutouts. It was melodrama.

One of the things I'm supposed to do is bring these silent films into the new century. If I were to stick closely with music that would have been used at the time, it would end up sounding dated.

Even though I'm essentially writing musical motifs that are founded in 19th century romanticism and classical music, you'll hear a little bit of John Coltrane and Miles Davis in the score. I even had a subtle Jimi Hendrix reference that I snuck in but with bassoon and clarinet and cello," he says.

"A silent film score is more like a ballet in the sense that there's the visual component and then there's the music.

A silent film score has to engage the audience and maintain their interest in the movie and sustain a certain amount

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of energy. It also has to comment on the characters and it has to speak for them.

It has to inform the audience as a thirdparty observer to the story on screen and reveal details that maybe wouldn't be revealed otherwise."

Scoring a silent film can be difficult in the era of surround sound — crashing cars, screaming sirens, booming blasts.

"With a typical first-run feature film, for example, the music is but one component of the sound," Maddala says. "The music, when it does enter, can really have a very dramatic impact on what you're seeing, whereas if it's a wall-to-wall score as in a silent film the music can have the effect of becoming a little more like wallpaper."

WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT addala didn't immediately stand out when he moved from San Francisco, where he had been working at Dolby Laboratories, to Los Angeles after composing the score for "The Ace of Hearts." Although he continued getting assignments for silent movies, contemporary film directors weren't exactly knocking down his door. He took a day job designing loudspeakers and microphones — and maintained his artistic integrity.

"I turned down an offer to do a porn film. The music is just perfunctory.

And 1 wouldn't have been able to use

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50

fit 1 WAS ALWAYS INTERESTED IN THE WAY MUSIC CAN HEIGHTEN THE DRAMATIC EFFECT ...MUSIC HAS A LOT OF POWER IN TERMS OF BEING ABLE TO MANIPULATE PEOPLE'S EMOTIONS. J J my real name," he says earnestly.

"One of the things I started doing when I came to L.A. was camping out at the film schools. I started talking to graduate students at UCLA and at USC and at AFI and offered to score their films pro bono. They didn't have any money. If I could give them a spectacular score, when they graduated and started working for a studio or they got a music budget, hopefully they'd remember they worked with me and want to hire me."

That's how he connected with director Eric Kmetz, for whom Maddala in August finished the score for the feature film "Grasshopper," starring James Franco and Rachel Miner. Their earlier collaboration was "Omar & Fiona" for the American Film Institute.

Maddala also has written the scores for three of director Xiaojin Bao's animated films — "Catch Up," "Moonchasing" and "Mother." He has written songs for and produced an album of Tibetan music. His work has been heard at the world-renowned Sundance competition as well as at film festivals in such far-reaching places as Hong Kong and India. In 2005, a 30-minute broadcast, "Constructing the Narrative: An Interview with Vivek Maddala," aired on National Public Radio.

"The music that I write essentially follows the dramatic needs of the story.

Hopefully all my scores kind of sound

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

like me. I've been told that is the case," he says. "When you're an artist, you typically want an identity, but with film scoring the purpose of the music is to serve the drama. If the score has too much character on its own, I suppose it can be distracting. It's a delicate balance between trying to put my unique fingerprint on the music the way it serves the drama and without distracting from the dramatic vision of the director.

"I was always interested in the way music can heighten the dramatic effect, even when I was in middle school watching 'Miami Vice,' the juxtaposition of this Phil Collins song with this dramatic moment. Music has a lot of power in terms of being able to manipulate people's emotions. In a sense, that's what I do as a film composer. I manipulate people's emotions."

CHASING A DREAM addala intended to be both an engineer and a composer all along. "1 studied electrical engineering because it seemed like a pretty good marriage of my interest in music from a signal-processing standpoint and my interest in math and physics," says Maddala, a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston at age 15 and a Georgia Tech freshman at 16.

"After college I was working as a hardware design engineer at Tektronix.

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r

Then in '971 got a call from Tom Scholz, the leader of Boston, asking if I was interested in joining the band. The band's manager knew me from some work I had done in the industry. When I was in high school I did a lot of recording at studios in Florida. It varied from TV commercials to a bunch of tracks for an album I wanted to release," he says.

When he got the call from the band, Maddala was taking graduate classes in electrical engineering and applied physics part time at the University of Washington in Seattle. "I was in the middle of a quarter when I took off. I had to take my final exams from the road. The band proctored them. It sounds like they'd be really slack, but they weren't. They didn't give me any extra time."

Maddala, a toddler when "More Than a Feeling" hit No. 5 on the Billboard chart in 1976, was 23 when he went on the road with the band out of Boston. These guys had been touring for such a long time.

"We released the greatest hits record in June of '97, then did a U.S. tour. It was very 'Spinal Tap'-ish. It was crazy how the line between reality and satire was so

blurred," Maddala says.

"I was sort of the miscellaneous guy. 1 did a little bit of Hammond organ, a little bit of guitar.

Mainly one of the reasons they hired me was that I was both an engineer and a musician. I actually designed a lot of the stage gear. It was grueling, probably more so because of the, dare I say, 'unique' position that I was in as both a musician and an engineer. I was responsible for every piece of gear on the stage. I had to have the schematics for every piece of gear and understand how it worked and how to fix it. My hours were something like 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. every day. I'd sleep on the tour bus.

.

"I think it made me a better engineer. One of the cool things about studying engineering at Georgia Tech is it really helps train your mind to think analytically, which is useful in any field, whether it's in engineering or the arts. Working for Boston and going through that experience really helped me put the music business into

51

perspective. T don't want to say I became disillusioned with being in rock 'n' roll, but it's really much more about the business than the music, which is a cliche I realize, but I also learned that I really wanted to make my own music and get paid for that rather than support someone else's musical vision."

ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN addala was envisioning entire compositions in his head and writing pop songs, orchestral music and big band jazz by age 10.

"I had a piano teacher who was very unconventional, who was very interested in having me collaborate rather than having me play the same stuff everyone else did. She was a bit of a rogue. That was great for me in terms of her encouraging me to reinterpret the

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classics. I would take Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Chopin and have them swing. I would lay down a funky bass line to it, things you're not supposed to do. For me, it made it far more interesting than rigidly adhering to the musical orthodoxy," he says.

Maddala continued experimenting at Georgia Tech, where he played drums and piano with the jazz ensemble and became involved with the Musicians Network with classmate Randy McDow, IE 95, MS PubPol 03, now director of the President's

Scholarship Program at the Institute.

"Randy recorded a bunch of music for me," Maddala says. "He had a fledgling project studio with some, at the time, fairly advanced recording gear. We had a blast. He would run the equipment and I would record my music."

McDow says he first realized how talented his friend was when he served as Maddala's engineer for a recording session in the basement of the Couch Building.

"He used a drum track from a vinyl record as the base for a song and he laid additional percussion, bass, keyboards and guitars on top of that. The instrument parts were very different, with complex chords and rhythms, yet when we played them all back together, I was blown away by the rich layers he had created â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and he had done all of this in his head," McDow says.

"While he could have charted the parts, he was good enough to do it from memory. Unlike some musicians who needed take after take to get it right, Vivek was an amazing player," he says. "When I hear Vivek's work on Turner Classic Movies now, I have some understanding of how he works and just how much information he can juggle in his head at once.

"I didn't know then that he would become a film composer, but I knew that there were not many people

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around with his level of talent and knowledge," McDow says.

Maddala composes for all instruments, although he primarily plays drums, piano and guitar. "You have to have an understanding of the idiomatic properties of a given instrument," he says. "I've done stupid things in the past. The first score that I did for Warner I forgot that woodwind players have to breathe. I wrote something like 16 bars of whole notes and I was up on the stand conducting and I realized even before the take, This can't be played.' We fixed it. 'You come in on the down beat. You take a breath on the end of four. You come in on three.'"

A SHINING STAR he crescendo came with the "power trip" Maddala experienced when his piece was performed live by woodwinds, strings and percussion, all in sync, all the musicians playing the notes the composer had written.

"It's also humbling. The first time I stood before an orchestra of L.A. players it was humbling because the quality of the talent was so immense and because a lot of the people in the orchestra were my childhood heroes.

'Wow, there's Bill Reichenbach on trombone. I remember listening to him on those old Earth, Wind & Fire records and Quincy Jones records and there he is — and he's going to play my music'

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"I always program everything into my computer so I know what it's going to sound like before the orchestra ever plays it. But the players always bring something to the performance. It's better than what I've written because they bring their own personalities and characters to the interpretation," he says.

"The conductor's score for 'Wild Oranges' comes out to some 2,400 pages if you add up all the pages for all the different parts," Maddala continues.

"I compose on the computer more out of necessity. Long gone are the days where you can write the music on paper, then audition for a director on piano and the first time they hear it is at the orchestra session. Now they always require a mock-up on the computer."

The requisite computer, as well as assorted guitars and drums, Maddaladesigned speakers and recording equipment, are neatly arranged in the composer's home studio in Los Angeles. Maddala, now supporting himself through his music, writes there every day, whether he feels inspired or not.

"A lot of times I just have to sit in silence and be alone with my thoughts," he says. "Sometimes I'll hear a combination of cadences in the air. A bus will go by and there will be an interesting sound. A bird and a car horn will trigger something in my

head. It's so random. I even did a thing where I closed my eyes and just started playing. I came up with this bluesy little lick, four notes I probably never would have come up with, purely by accident."

Maddala's ability to pull music from the air has propelled him into an elite circle. He returned to Atlanta a few years ago as a guest of Turner execs for a televised "old school, new school kind of thing," featuring the young composer and the legendary Elmer Bernstein, whose film-scoring credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Magnificent Seven."

The two composers were taken for dinner in Buckhead, where, by chance, part-time Atlantan Elton John walked into the restaurant. "He and Elmer Bernstein knew each other. They had worked on a film together," Maddala says. "Here are these two Academy Award winners in the same room. I thought, 'What am 1 doing at this table?' It was quite the scene."

Sitting at a computer keyboard, tapping in www.tadcaster.com and listening to Maddala's audio resume gives measure as to why the young composer was at the table, GT Black-and-white photos, this and previous page: Maddala at work during recording sessions for "The Ace of Hearts." Below: Maddala with legendary composer Elmer Bernstein In Atlanta.

£ £ I ALWAYS PROGRAM EVERYTHING INTO MY COMPUTER SO I KNOW WHAT IT'S GOING TO SOUND LIKE BEFORE THE ORCHESTRA EVER PLAYS IT. 5 5

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

Tissue Engineering Pioneer 'Genius' Linda Griffith explores ways to eliminate need for organ transplants

By Nicole Branan

54

No one knows what the future of medical technology will look like but a glimpse into Linda Griffith's lab at MIT reveals a preview nothing short of spectacular. The biotechnologist started her career trying to grow replacement organs on the lab bench and make them available to the thousands of patients whose lives depend on finding an organ donor.

But along the way she had a better idea: Why not try to eliminate the need for organ transplants altogether?

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

Griffith, ChE 82, a biological engineering professor, is pioneering a novel application of tissue engineering. She builds threedimensional physiological models of organs on tiny chips. These living chips mimic real organs in the human body and can be used to study the performance of new drugs and allow scientists to observe how diseases such as cancer form and develop — experiments that wouldn't be possible in humans.

"We hope these models will

someday greatly accelerate the development of new drugs that may cure patients early in the disease so transplants won't be needed anymore," Griffith says.

So far, Griffith and her team have been able to build a liver chip. They transplanted liver cells onto a tiny three-dimensional silicon scaffold covered with narrow channels — the model liver's blood vessels — each only a little wider than a human hair. Then they placed the chip into a bioreactor that mimics the human cir-

Photo: Donna Coveney/MIT

how cancers spread. "The model may be useful to mimic the lodging of a single tumor cell in the tissue and that would help develop antimetastatic drugs."

Griffith's work is shaping the frontiers of biotechnology, so it doesn't come as a surprise that she was one of the 2006 recipients of the prestigious MacArthur "genius" grants. The energetically charged 46-year-old puts her heart into her work and is passionate about education. Over the last few years she helped create a biological engineering department at MIT. "A major roadblock in the whole field of biological engineering has been the lack of students who are trained to do engineering based on modern molecular life sciences," she says. Last year, the new department launched the first new undergrad major at MIT in 39 years with Griffith in charge of the undergraduate curriculum.

Bob Nerem, head of the biomedical engineering program at Georgia Tech, served on the external advisory committee for the new department.

culation system and continuously pumps fluid across the top and through the channels in much the same way blood flows through a real liver in the body.

"When taken out of the body tissue, cells typically lose their ability to properly metabolize drugs or become infected with hepatitis viruses," Griffith says.

The reactor, smaller than a dime, runs at body temperature and regulates oxygen and nutrient concentrations such that they mirror those in the real organ, Griffith explains.

This lack of proper models has made it difficult for researchers to develop drugs to treat liver diseases such as hepatitis C infections, the leading cause of liver failure in the United States that claims the lives of more than 8,000 Americans every year.

Liver diseases are difficult to study because once liver cells are outside the body they quickly lose most of their specific functions.

Griffith's chip makes it possible to watch liver cells under a

microscope and learn what's happening in the tissue when it is attacked by a virus. Understanding how hepatitis C goes about its murderous business in the liver will allow scientists to design suitable drugs, which can then be tested on the liver chip.

Drug performance tests done exclusively on the chip rather than on a real liver would eliminate the risk of harming anybody and, Griffith hopes, will one day even make animal tests obsolete.

The chip may also help study

"He has been a friend and mentor for a very long time and he was one of the people who really helped to get the MIT administration to pay attention to what we were doing with this new department. We would never have come this far without his incredible advice and enthusiasm," Griffith says.

When Griffith isn't teaching classes filled with several hundred students or supervising the 30 members of her own lab she is probably riding her red Ducati Monster 750, which she won in a bet. "I first bought a motorcycle when I was a student at Georgia Tech because I couldn't afford a car," she says. "But after I got it I started to really enjoy riding. So ever since I have had a bike just for fun." G T

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

55

>>RESEARCHNIWS

Power Cell Microprocessor research center expected to make big impact

By Gary Goettling

Even for a campus accustomed to acquiring significant new facilities in recent years, Georgia Tech's selection as home for a pioneering microprocessor research center is very big news.

The STI Center of Competence, announced Nov. 15, will explore applications for a promising new computer microprocessor known as the Cell Broadband Engine or Cell.

The "STI" in the center's name is derived from the first letters of the three corporations that collaborated in the microprocessor's development: Sony, Toshiba and IBM. "We see Cell as the way of the future that's going to impact the entire world," says David A. Bader, associate professor and executive director of high-performance computing at Tech's College of Computing.

Conventional chips may embed two or four processors, but Cell's innovative design accommodates nine processing cores on a single chip, Bader explains.

"One processor is the standard power architecture type, a class of processor you would see in an IBM supercomputer," he says. "It's

56

augmented with eight synergistic processing elements that can work independently or collaboratively to achieve amazing speeds — up to 10 times faster than traditional computer chips."

By 2010, Bader says, Cell design is expected to allow up to 32 microprocessors per chip.

The technique is particularly well-suited for handling the high volume of data involved with multimedia and digital content creation such as in computer games, real-time video, virtual reality and interactive TV. In fact, Cell technology is the operating heart of the recently released Sony PlayStation 3 as well as a line of IBM servers and PC accelerators.

Toshiba plans to use Cell processors in its high-definition television sets.

The STI Center, which will be located in the new

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

Christopher W. Klaus Advanced Computing Building, received startup funding from the three founding companies, Georgia Tech and the National Science Foundation. Its mission includes building a community of programmers and users and broadening industry support for Cell.

"We'll be looking at a number of everyday applications to see how they could take advantage of Cell's extremely high capabilities as well as enhancing the performance of existing products like handheld devices," Bader says. "We'll also be offering tutorials and workshops to educate users about CellHe adds that the center will provide remote access to Cell hardware installed at Georgia Tech and create and disseminate software optimized for Cell systems.

Georgia Tech was chosen from more than a dozen universities competing for the center. According to published reports, the keys to Tech's selection included the real-world applications orientation of the College of Computing's curriculum and areas of expertise that best matched with the >»

"We see Cell as the way of the future that's going to impact the entire world."

— David A. Bader Associate professor and executive director ot highperformance computing

>>RESEARCHNFWS

"One of the largest uncertainties right now in climate models is the ability to predict how clouds would respond to changing particle levels. We can now see very strongly the influence of marine biology on oceanic clouds."

— Athanasios Nenes Georgia Tech assistant professor

58

interests of the three corporate Cell partners.

Cell technology is as inevitable as it is fast, Bader says. ''For the past 40 years we've relied essentially on the same algorithms to increase performance by making chips faster and smaller," he explains. "But clock speeds are reaching a plateau and we're near the limits of miniaturization."

The future of computing, he continues, rests with "this new paradigm of heterogeneous multicore processing" represented by the Cell approach.

Bader anticipates a unique global role for the STI Center.

"We have the first Center of Competence for Cell processors," he says. "It's a great opportunity for Georgia Tech."

Ocean Cloud Cover A Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist and a former colleague have reported a new and potentially important mechanism by which chemical emissions from ocean phytoplankton may influence the formation of clouds that reflect sunlight away from our planet.

Discovery of the new link between clouds and the biosphere grew out of efforts to explain increased cloud cover observed over an area of the Southern Ocean where a large bloom of phytoplankton was occurring.

Based on satellite data, Athanasios Nenes of Georgia Tech and Nicholas Meskhidze, formerly at the Institute but now at North Carolina State University, hypothesized that airborne

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

particles produced by oxidation of the chemical isoprene — which is emitted by the phytoplankton — may have contributed to a doubling of cloud droplet concentrations seen over a large area of ocean off the eastern coast of South America.

Using complex numerical models, they estimated that the resulting increase in cloudiness reduced the absorption of sunlight by an amount comparable to what has been measured in highly polluted areas of the globe. If confirmed by field studies, this connection between clouds and biological activity

could add a critical new component to global climate models.

Many environmental scientists believe that increased cloud cover may be partially countering the effects of global warming by reducing the amount of energy the planet absorbs from the sun.

"Studies like this one may help reshape the way we think about how the biosphere interacts with clouds and climate," says Nenes, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Photo: NASA

Strange though his idea might have seemed to others in his field, Wang, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, discovered that he could integrate dopamine, a type of neurotransmitter, into a polymer to stimulate nerve tissues to send out new connections.

The discovery is the first step toward the eventual goal of implanting the new polymer into patients suffering from neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or epilepsy, to help repair damaged nerves.

The "designer" polymer was recognized by the neurons when used on a small piece of nerve tissue and stimulated extensive neural growth. The implanted polymer didn't cause any tissue scarring or nerve degeneration, allowing the nerve to grow in a hostile environment after injury, GT "One of the largest uncertainties right now in climate models is the ability to predict how clouds would respond to changing particle levels â&#x20AC;&#x201D; whether they originate from humans with air pollution or from biological activity. We can now see very strongly the influence of marine biology on ocean ic clouds."

Nerve Tissue Regrowth When Yadong Wang, a chemist by training, first ventured into nerve regeneration two years

ago, he didn't know that his peers would have considered him crazy.

His idea was simple: Because neural circuits use electrical signals often conducted by neurotransmitters to communicate between the brain and the rest of the body, he could build the chemical messengers into the material used to repair a broken circuit. The neurotransmitters could coax the neurons in the damaged nerves to regrow and reconnect with their target organ.

Professor Yadong Wang's discovery is the first step toward the eventual goal of implanting the new polymer into patients suffering from neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or epilepsy, to help repair damaged nerves.

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Internet Security Systems in October for $13 billion and named ISS president and CEOTom Noonan, ML 83, general manager of MM internet Security Systems. Working with the team at MM, Noonan is responsible for the overall Strategy, growth and execution of the security division. It is his ambition, he says, to make the division the No. I security provider in the markeiplace. Noonan provided the business leadership to Atlanta-based ISS in partnership with founder Christopher W. Klaus, who launched the company in 1994 while he was a student at GeorgiaTech, Under Noonan, ISS revenue grew to nearly $330 million in its first decade. When MM acquired ISS on Oct. 20, the company had grown to 1,400 employees in more than 30 countries worldwide.

On Nov. 4, Noonan was inducted into the Technology Hall of Lame of Georgia, joining an elite company of innovators who have helped drive the development of technology and industry in the state.

1

You have compared your new role to running a startup. How is that?

This next phase of ISS is going to be an exciting chapter.

The ability to apply virtually unlimited resources to execute our ambitious vision for automating the management of security .nut managing risk across a distributed enterprise is something that we have always dreamed of. The ability to gain access to IBM's vast customer base and serve them uniquely provides us the opportunity to bring pre-emptive security to the mass market. >Âť Georgia Tech Alumni Maua/ino â&#x20AC;˘ Winlai:'()()/

> > I NTER VIEW IBM Internet Security Systems will operate as a separate division, and the ISS management team will be chartered with operating and growing this company within the IBM company. Startups are full of passion, hope and vision — just like ISS is today.

"American businesses have created the strongest economy the world has ever known and with it the most powerful nation on the planet. To protect the strength of our economy and our national security, we must protect the very fiber with which it is connected, the cyberspace that benefits us all."

What is the size of IBM-ISS now and where is the future growth?

At the time of the acquisition, ISS was approximately 1,400 employees. With our planned growth, we expect to grow our head count dramatically both in our Atlanta headquarters location as well as within our field operating units operating in over 30 countries around the world. While we do not publish specific internal plan numbers, you can expect that ISS will grow many times its current size over the next five years to support our objective of becoming the number one company in this $50 billion global industry.

You are a founding member of President George W. Bush's National Infrastructure Advisory Council. What insights has that given you into security problems facing our nation?

During my time at ISS, I have had the privilege to serve our country through presidential committees and appointments, under both Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush. Security is a new force that will shape our culture, our policies and our thinking in the 21st century.

Societies around the globe face unexpected threats to national security as we now live in a world where insecurity cannot be eradicated and security requires

62

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

new means and new visions.

The protection of cyberspace marks the first national security issue our government cannot handle alone. Today's cyber threats are much more complex and destructive than ever before, while becoming easier to create and launch. Today's threats do not discriminate among home users, small businesses, large enterprises and government organizations — putting our citizens, our economy and our national security at risk. The White House called upon the private sector for help in this fight and I have played a leadership role in that fight since the early days of the Internet.

The burden of responsibility ultimately falls to us, as business leaders, to instigate change.

Cyber attacks affect business production, intellectual capital, financial stability and customer confidence. Consequently, shareholders, customers, partners and employees will hold companies accountable for such security breaches.

The threats to computer security seem huge — from identity theft to cyber warfare. What are the most serious threats to Internet security?

Cyber threats hold the potential to disrupt every aspect of our lives. As a society, we are just beginning to understand the vast and negative consequences associated with identity theft, loss of personal data and other frauds that compromise our cyber infrastructure. Cyber threats also impact our critical infrastructure systems including the distribution of oil, gas and other sources of energy, transportation systems, financial and banking systems

and systems of communication.

Perhaps the biggest risk of cyber threats and cyber fraud is the risk that consumers and businesses will lose faith in the Internet as a vehicle for commerce.

What steps should an average company take to have Internet security?

Establish a trusted relationship with a competent partner like Internet Security Systems.

Properly securing and protecting a business infrastructure should be left to the experts as it is not a simple task. In the future, the vast majority of businesses will come to the realization that undertaking this in house is an expensive and time-consuming job and one that they are poorly prepared to do.

Chris Klaus founded ISS as a college student. You became president and CEO. Chris calls you a mentor. What made you two such a successful team?

Chris and I shared a common vision from the start and built a relationship upon trust, hard work and commitment.

Our partnership has endured startup, expansion and bubbles and busts. We have also endured a lot together, and these experiences have brought us closer together as humans and as business partners. Chris is a brilliant person and a good friend. He sees things that others can't, which is why he has solidly found his niche as an innovator and an entrepreneur.

What enabled ISS to succeed and outperform industry giants?

It is often said that the hard-

er you work, the luckier you get.

ISS has been blessed with many things â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an ambitious vision, strong leadership, committed management, seasoned advisers and a strong system of values to guide us.

What are your goals for IBMISS? IBM has ambitious goals in the global security marketplace, which depend on the solid execution of the ISS business. We will continue to focus on profitable growth as the business objective. Near-term objectives include retention of our personnel through this transition, accelerating our engine of innovation, expanding our engineering and field operations staffs and maintaining a laser focus on our customer.

If IBM-ISS is to become the number one service provider, how will you do it?

IBM Internet Security Systems will become the number one enterprise security company in the marketplace. Managed and on-demand security services delivered over our pre-emptive ISS Proventia technology platform uniquely differentiate the company in the competitive global security marketplace.

The strategy to create the largest and most comprehensive security company in the world depends upon expansion of the Proventia technology platform to address broader enterprise security, privacy, data protection, compliance and control issues, as well as dramatic expansion to access the hundreds of thousands of IBM customers Photo: Gary Meek

worldwide who require a more comprehensive and powerful approach to enterprise security.

What are your global opportunities and challenges?

Since its inception ISS has served global customers through local offices around the world. The vast majority of the growth in the Internet over the next 10 years will occur outside the United States. Prior to the acquisition, ISS operated offices with ISS employees in over 30 countries around the world and operated 7-24 security operations centers on five continents. Last year our revenue composition was about 55 percent inside the United States and approximately 45 percent throughout the rest of the world. Given current trends, international revenue will continue to grow at a healthy pace.

Developing markets in Eastern and Middle Europe, Latin America and Asia continue to create strong demand for ISS. As for challenges, this age of increased U.S. business regulation has placed enormous demands upon the management

of publicly traded companies.

Balancing the requirements of U.S. regulators while being compliant with the unique rules and regulations of each country brings enormous challenges for leadership in everything from human resource policies and privacy regulations to accounting and revenue recognition.

In our particular case, we are also highly regulated because of the encryption technologies that are incorporated within our products, making it expensive and difficult to do business flexibly and profitably outside of the United States.

In addition, business customs, practices and ethics vary widely from one land to another, adding additional complexity and risk to each investment in another country, GT

"Cyber security is a new force that will shape our culture, our policies and our thinking in the 21st century. Societies around the globe face unexpected threats. ... We now live in a world where insecurity cannot be eradicated and security requires new means and new visions."

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67

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

Rock Solid

By Gary Goettling Photography: Gary Meek

Computer engineering professor Jim Hamblen's hands-on teaching methods have earned him praise from his students. In his spare time, he mines fluorescent minerals — a small fraction of the mineral world's offerings.

68

A

lumnus Jim Hamblen knows the joy of tinkering. As a kid, he liked to open things up out of curiosity to see what was inside, how they worked. It's a hard habit to break.

"1 just got a new computer gizmo for the lab the other day and the first thing I did was pop the screws off the back to take a look inside," he laughs.

In high school, he spent many an afternoon meticulously sorting and soldering the capacitors, transistors, color-coded diodes and other electronic paraphernalia from the latest Heath Kit. As a professor of computer engineering at Tech, Hamblen, EE 74, PhD 84, has brought his penchant for hands-on learning to the classroom for more than 20 years.

"I've been involved in a lot of the senior design courses, where students take a computer and build something," he says. "A lot of them built various kinds of robots or prototypes of some sort of embedded product they thought would be an interesting gizmo to have around."

This past fall, Hamblen served as faculty mentor to a group of four Tech students — Ayan Kishore, David Liu, Vikram Sivakumar and Herman Wong — participating in the Windows Embedded Student Challenge, an international competition of innovative computer applications sponsored by Microsoft. The group's energy-saving home automation system posted an impressive top-10 finish out of 200 team contestants.

Learning by doing is important enough to Hamblen that he requires hands-on design projects of all his students, a task most find rewarding.

One recent measure of their appreciation is Hamblen's receipt of the 2006 W. Roane Beard Outstanding Teacher Award, endowed by the class of 1940 to reward teaching excellence. Among the factors that guide selection of the honoree are teaching evaluation scores, letters of recommendation from current and former students and a demonstrated ability to inspire students.

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter 2007

"It was very exciting to win the award," says Hamblen, whose other honors include the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award from the electrical and computer engineering senior class of 2004.

I

ames Ovid Hamblen attended high school in Atlanta. His father was a computer science pressor who set up computer centers at schools around the country.

Hamblen skipped his senior year of high school and entered Georgia Tech as an electrical engineering major. After graduating in 1974, he was accepted at Purdue University, where he earned a master's in electrical engineering.

While a graduate student, Hamblen worked on the design of a fault-tolerant multiprocessor PBX system for Wescom Inc. He later joined the staff at Texas Instruments in Austin, Texas, as a systems analyst involved in the design of the TMS9900 microprocessor development system.

His next move was to Denver, where he worked for Martin Marietta as a senior engineer in the software research and development section

"We have several labs where students are always working on their projects, and I go in there and help them quite often,"Jim Hamblen says. "I think students don't get a lot of hands-on work experience anymore, so when they do, they appreciate it."

designing computer systems for satellites and spacecraft.

When Hamblen returned to Georgia Tech for his PhD in electrical engineering, he decided to stay put for a while. He began teaching at his alma mater shortly after receiving his doctorate.

When he's not teaching or conducting research â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hamblen's research activities include rapid prototyping of digital systems, embedded systems, computer architecture and computer-aided design â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he might be adding to his collection of rocks and minerals.

"I developed an interest in geology in high school," he says. "It's probably a good thing I didn't go into geology because a lot of those people are unemployed these days."

H

amblen's particular interest is fluorescent minerals, which represent but a tiny fraction of the mineral world. "A lot of them look like ordinary old rocks in the daylight," he says in explaining their appeal. "When you hit them with an ultraviolet light, you see all kinds of incredibly

bright, vivid colors coming off of something that looks like a plain rock."

He says the best places to look for fluorescent minerals are mines, which he began exploring while on family camping trips. Some stalactites in caves fluoresce a little bit, "but they're not necessarily the most colorful, most interesting ones." Mines in the North Carolina mountains have some of the most interesting fluorescent minerals in the Southeast, he adds.

Many of Hamblen's specimens are featured on a newly released DVD, "The Photo-Atlas of Minerals," published by the Gem and Mineral Council of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Photographing fluorescent minerals is a bit tricky, he adds. "Since the invisible ultraviolet light makes camera images turn purple, you have to use special filters."

Hamblen has learned to be selective when choosing additions for his collection. "Rocks and minerals are easy to collect," he says. "You have to be careful that you don't get too many because you'll quickly run out of room for them." GT Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

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Another benefit from the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Preferential

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Minimum of a 55% discount on all interstate relocations.

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

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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

^We are Cooingfor you!

The researchers at Georgia Tech's Adult Development and Aging Lab (ADAR) are conducting research studies on memory development and aging. Specifically, we study thinking, reasoning, learning, and memory across the lifespan.

Studies range from single to multiple sessions.

Participation is compensated about $10 per hour.

Adults of all ages are needed to participate.

If you are interested in contributing to our research, please call to participate in our studies.

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Georgia Tech

70

Our GA Tech facility: Ph: 404.894.7450 or 404.894.3155 GA TECH School of Psychology, Atlanta, GA 30332 Our Marietta facility: Ph: 770.953.8373 1640 Powers Ferry Road SE, Governor's Ridge, Bldg 20, Suite 100, Marietta, GA 30067

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine â&#x20AC;˘ Winter 2007

Sit back. Relax Let us take care of your meeting details.

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Homecoming Salute The sights and scenes on the ground ranged from racers on tricycles to a fire-eating performer, but no one had the spectacular "overview" of Homecoming on the Georgia Tech campus that was enjoyed by Jeff Latham, IE 99, and Perry Solomon, CE 99. The two Navy lieutenants, in their roaring F/A-18 Hornets, buzzed Bobby Dodd Stadium preceding the football game against Miami. Latham and Solomon, flight instructors based at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., must have inspired the Yellow Jackets, who defeated the Hurricanes 30-23. GT

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Winter

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