2005 Corporate Affiliates Program (CAP) Meeting
May 5, 2005
Abstracts and Speaker Profiles
Thursday May 5, 2005—Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Peter Ramadge, Department Chair, Electrical Engineering
Professor Peter Ramadge was born in Sydney, Australia. He received the B.Sc. degree, B.E. (Electr.) degree and the M.E. degree from the University of Newcastle, Australia, and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in September 1984, where he is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering. He has been a visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Visiting Research Scientist at IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory. He has served as an associate editor of the journals: Systems and Control Letters, Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems, Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications and the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. He was Program Chair of the 32nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in San Antonio Texas and has served on the board of governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of SIAM.
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Technical Session I
Physical-Layer Comunications Research: The Road Ahead
9:00 a.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Sergio Verdu
Abstract: An overview of the state of the art in communication theory and the research areas likely to influence future communication systems design. Information Theory, Channel Coding Theory, Signal Processing, and Data Compression are the prime movers in physical-layer communications research and I will review some of the recent advances and challenges ahead.
Professor Sergio Verdu - is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University where he teaches and conducts research on information theory in the Information Sciences and Systems Group. He is also affiliated with the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. Sergio Verdú received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984. Conducted at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois, his doctoral research pioneered the field of Multiuser Detection. Sergio Verdú was a recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, a Princeton Engineering Council Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching, the 2000 Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. In 1998, Cambridge University Press published his book ``Multiuser Detection.'' His papers have received several awards: the D. Fink Paper Award from the IEEE, the 1998 Information Theory Outstanding Paper Award, a Golden Jubilee Paper Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society, the 2000 Paper Award from the Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, and the 2002 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Award from the IEEE Communications Society . Sergio Verdú has served as Associate Editor for Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1993 for "contributions to multiuser communications and to information theory." He served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1997. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory. He has held visiting appointments at the Australian National University, the Technion, the University of Tokyo, the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2002 he held the Hewlett-Packard Visiting Research Professorship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, CA. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Board of Flarion Technologies. |
Quantum Cascade Lasers
9:30 a.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Claire Gmachl
Abstract: Semiconductor intersubband Quantum Cascade (QC) lasers are a new and rapidly evolving technology. Some of their strengths are the intrinsic mid-infrared wavelength tailorability, high optical power, high-speed modulation capabilities, and fascinating design potential. After a short introduction into the basics of QC-lasers, several recent aspects will be discussed, especially focusing on applications and on QC-lasers with heterogeneous cascades. On one hand, the lasers are currently being developed for optical trace gas sensors in environmental, medical, or security applications. On the other hand, fundamental design changes still allow the development of lasers with novel properties, such as the recent development of QC-lasers capable of generating not only fundamental pump light, but also nonlinear light.
Professor Claire Gmachl - received her Ph.D. degree (sub auspicies praesidentis) in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, in 1995. In 1996, she joined Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ, as Post-Doctoral Member of Technical Staff, to work on Quantum Cascade (QC) and microcavity lasers. Key contributions were the development of single-mode and tunable distributed feedback QC lasers and chaotic micro-cavity lasers. In March 1998 she became a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs, and a Distinguished Member of Staff in 2002. In September 2003, Dr. Gmachl joined Princeton University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and adjunct faculty to PRISM. Dr. Gmachl has demonstrated many innovative QC laser concepts such as bi-directional, multi-wavelength, or broadband QC lasers, and the first instance of nonlinear light generation in these lasers. She is involved in the development of QC lasers for trace gas sensing applications and their commercialization. Dr. Gmachl is one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” of 2004; she is a member of the 2002 TR100 and a 2002/03 IEEE/LEOS Distinguished Lecturer. She is also a co-recipient of the “The Snell Premium” award of the IEE, UK, 2003, and the 2000 “NASA Group Achievement Award”, and a recipient of the 1996 “Solid State Physics Award” of the Austrian Physical Society, and the “1995 Christian Doppler Award,” Austria. She is a senior member of the IEEE, and a member of several more professional societies. |
Technical Session II
Engineered Computation and Communications for Synthetic Multicellular Systems
11:30 a.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Ron Weiss
Abstract:
Cell-cell communication is a pervasive activity common to both single cell and multicellular organisms, and is used in coordinating cell behavior for a variety of tasks ranging from quorum sensing in bacteria to embryogenesis in mammalian cells. Engineering synthetic multicellular systems to exhibit desired functions will improve our quantitative understanding of naturally occurring cell-cell communication, and will also have biotechnology applications in areas such as biosensing, biomaterial fabrication, and tissue engineering. Here we will present theoretical and experimental results from synthetic systems implemented in bacteria and higher order organisms. We will begin by describing how information flows through synthetic transcriptional cascades in single cells by examining noise propagation, ultrasensitivity, and impedance matching. Understanding these issues is critical for the analysis and de novo engineering of complex gene networks
We will then discuss several synthetic multicellular systems that have been programmed to exhibit unique coordinated cell behavior. The first system is the pulse generator where sender cells communicate to nearby receiver cells, which then respond with a transient burst of gene expression whose amplitude and duration depends on the distance from the senders. In the second system, receiver cells have been engineered to respond to cell-cell communication signals only within prespecified ranges. We will demonstrate how this system can be used to generate a variety of interesting spatial patterns. In the third system, cells have been engineered to “play”
Conway ’s Game of Life, where cells live or die based on the density of their neighbors. This system exhibits complex global emergent behavior that arises from the interaction of cells based on simple local rules. We will finish by discussing preliminary experimental results of implementing simple synthetic gene networks and artificial cell-cell communication in yeast and mammalian cells.
Professor Ron Weiss - is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, and also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Molecular Biology. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (2001). His research focuses primarily on Synthetic Biology, where he programs cell behavior by constructing and modeling biochemical and cellular computing systems. A major thrust of his work is the synthesis of gene networks that are engineered to perform in vivo analog and digital logic computation. He is also interested in programming cell aggregates to perform coordinated tasks using cell-cell communication with chemical diffusion mechanisms such as quorum sensing. He has constructed and tested several novel in vivo biochemical logic circuits and intercellular communication systems. Weiss is interested in both hands-on experimental work and in implementing software infrastructures for simulation and design work. For his work in Synthetic Biology, Weiss has received MIT's Technology Review Magazine's TR100 Award ("top 100 young innovators", 2003), was selected as a speaker for the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (2003), received the E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr./Emerson Electric Company Faculty Advancement Award at Princeton University (2003), his research in Synthetic Biology was named by MIT's Technology Review Magazine as one of "10 emerging technologies that will change your world" (2004), and was chosen as a finalist for the World Technology Network’s Biotechnology Award (2004). |
Light Controlling Light: All-Optical Techniques in Photonic Crystals
12:00 p.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Jason Fleischer
Abstract: Photonic crystals are periodic structures that guide and manipulate light in the same way that atomic crystals determine the motion of electrons. However, fabrication of photonic crystals is difficult, and, until recently, light behavior in them has been linear (that is, passively routed by the imposed structure). This latter restriction means that light can act as the signal carrier but cannot alter its own dynamics or directly influence other light signals. In this talk, I will review our efforts to create photonic structures using holography and our studies of nonlinear light propagation, in which the behavior of the signal, and its interactions, depends on its intensity. These all-optical methods allow creative engineering design without material fabrication and enable the observation of many phenomena that are universal in science but are difficult to see in other fields.
Professor Jason Fleischer - obtained his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1993 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1999. Following this, he was a Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute for Technology and served as a consultant for the College of Optics and Photonics/CREOL at the University of Central Florida. Industrial experience includes Prediction Sciences (a bioinformatics company for which he still consults), Signagenics (a video processing company), and a year at Lockheed Martin. He has been at Princeton since September 1, 2004. His research interests include nonlinear optics and photonics, soliton dynamics, and statistical and condensed matter physics. |
Technical Session III
Optimizing Communication Systems for Broadband Access
1:45 p.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Mung Chiang
Abstract: A ubiquitous and broadband access to information makes significant impacts to the economics and ways of life in our society. Part of the research in my group aims at providing a technological foundation to substantially enhance the data rate, ubiquity, and quality of information access networks. A particular focus is to further revolutionize the engineering of sending data along telephone wires, and another is to maximize user utilities in wireless networks through coding and medium access innovations. Achieving these goals require novel theoretical foundations that can in part be provided through the mathematical tools of optimization techniques. I will present an overview of nonlinear optimization methods and their important applications to communication problems, from deriving the fundamental limits of data transmission to designing resource allocation algorithms for network efficiency and robustness. I will highlight both exciting theoretical advances we have made over the last year and fruitful collaborations with industry that transfer such advances to practical communication systems optimization.
Professor Mung Chiang - received his B.S. (Honors) in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1999, 2000, and 2003, respectively. During Ph.D. program, he also worked part-time as a technical consultant at three telecom startup companies and a Principal Member of Technical Staff in Network Systems Engineering at SBC Communications. Since 2003, he has been an Assistant Professor at Princeton University. His research interests include nonlinear optimization of communication systems, architectures and algorithms in broadband access networks, and information theoretic limits of data transmission and compression. He has been awarded as a Hertz Foundation Fellow and received Stanford University School of Engineering Terman Award, SBC Communications New Technology Introduction Contribution Award, and National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Professor Chiang is the Lead Guest Editor of the Special Issue of IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications on ‘Nonlinear Optimization of Communication Systems’, and a Guest Editor of the Joint Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking on ‘Networking and Information Theory’. He has been developing a new course on ‘Nonlinear Optimization of Communication Systems’, as well as giving tutorials and organizing special sessions at IEEE and ACM conferences such as Sigmetrics, Infocom, and Globecom on the same subject. |
Nanoimprint - An Enabling Engine for Nanotechnology and Next Generation
2:15 p.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Professor Steve Chou
Abstract: My group, the NanoStructure Laboratory (NSL), has two primary missions: first, to develop new nanotechnologies for fabricating structures substantially smaller, better, and cheaper than current technology permits; and second, by combining cutting-edge nanotechnology with frontier knowledge from different disciplines, to explore innovative nanoscale electronic, optoelectronic, and magnetic devices. In the area of nanotechnology, we have developed a variety of nanofabrication technologies and fabricated various structures and transistors as small as 6 nm. A number of them are the smallest ever fabricated using the given technologies. For examples, we originated nanoimprint lithography (a revolutionary nanopatterning method with sub-10 nm features, low-cost, and high throughput) and lithographically induced self-assembly, LISA (a new self-assembly method). We fabricated nano-CDs with a density 400 Gbits/in2 (10 nm dots of 40 nm pitch). Recently we have demonstrated imprint of sub-100 nm features in organic light-emitting material on a flexible substrate for displays.
Professor Stephen Chou received his B.S. degree in physics at the University of Science and Technology of China in 1978, M.S. at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1982, and Ph.D. at M.I.T. in 1986. Next, he joined Stanford University, as a Research Associate, then a Lecturer, and later an Acting Assistant Professor. In 1989, he joined the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering; and he became an Associate Professor in 1992 and a Professor in 1994. He came to Princeton in 1997. In the past 15 years, his research has been in developing new nanotechnology and in exploring innovative nanoscale electronic, optoelectronic, and magnetic devices. He has served as a committee member on numerous international conferences. He is a membership of such societies as IEEE, APS, EDS, LEO. He is reviewer for seven journals. |
InGaAs Photodiodes: Beyond Telecommunications
3:30 p.m. Friend Center Auditorium F101
Dr. Chris Dries
Abstract: While InGaAs photodiodes were originally developed specifically for fiber optic telecommunications systems, these detectors are now playing important roles in a host of applications ranging from spectroscopy, biomedical imaging, astronomy, and military imaging. Phenomenology within the 0.9 - 1.7 micron wavelength band drives many of these applications, but more often, the ubiquitous availability of light sources within this wavelength band drives many of the specific applications such as optical coherence tomography, laser radar, and adaptive optics. During this talk, we will describe the evolution of InGaAs photodiode technology from single element detectors to staring focal plane arrays, and the applications that these (relatively) new staring arrays serve.
Dr. J. Christopher Dries *96, *99 |