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NOTE
FROM THE CHAIR
by Division Chair, Richard M. Murray
Winter
2003
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This
is our third issue of ENGenious
and I am coming up on my third anniversary as Division
Chair for the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. One
of the accomplishments that I'm very proud of is the establishment
of a strategic plan for the Division, developed with the help
of representatives from each of the options and major centers
in the Division. This plan is guiding our educational programs,
our faculty hiring, and our fundraising activities, and is being
further developed by faculty planning committees in each of the
major thrust areas. If you'd like to have a look, it's available
online at http://www.eas.caltech.edu/strategic_plan;
we would welcome your comments and feedback.
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Our
feature piece reports on the formation of Caltech's Information
Science and Technology Institute (ISTI), one of the major elements
of our strategic plan. The article fills almost one-third of this
issue, indicating how important and far-reaching the research
and teaching efforts of this new venture will ultimately be. Campus-wide,
one-fifth of the faculty and one-third of all students will be
involved in this multi-layered, multidisciplinary exploration
of the analysis and design of complex natural and synthetic information
systems. With its center of gravity in E&AS, ISTI will give us
tremendous reach in bringing the best and brightest to Caltech,
creating an approach that is likely to be emulated elsewhere,
and changing the way the world thinks about and harnesses information.
ISTI is a rare opportunity to pull the future a little closer.
As
we look around the rest of this issue, you will notice an addition
to one of the regular features. Our Alumni section profiles two
alums, a younger one (graduated within the last 5 years) and a
more established one. We hope you'll enjoy (and reminisce) reading
about the post-Tech adventures of Ivett Leyva (PhD '99) and Eric
Garen (BS '68).
Sincerely,
Richard
M. Murray
Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science
Image
above right: Domain patterns in the ferroelectric material
PbTiO3
obtained by using polarized light microscopy. Such microscopic
patterns form spontaneously in ferroelectric materials giving
rise to unique electro-mechanical properties which are useful
for applications in micromachines. Nine faculty members from
E&AS are investigating how such patterns can be engineered
to produce desired properties well beyond those currently
available, and at the limits of what is theoretically possible
(see http://www.femuri.caltech.edu).
This photograph was taken by graduate student Rongjing Zhang
in the laboratory of Professor G. Ravichandran. The area imaged
is about 2.5 mm x 1.2 mm. |
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