Engineering for the Future

The College of Engineering at UC Davis presented a lecture by Kristi S. Anseth on Monday, May 5, in 1005 GBSF Auditorium, Genome Center. A distinguished professor and the Tisone Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Anseth, spoke on “Materials to Study Cell Biology in the Fourth Dimension.”

Francis Lee, board chair and former CEO of Synaptics, Inc., spoke on Tuesday, April 23 at Kemper Hall on the UC Davis campus. A 1974 graduate of UC Davis, Lee has led Synaptics' growth into a leading worldwide developer of custom-designed user interface solutions for mobile computing, communications and entertainment devices. Synaptics' mission is to enrich the interaction between users and their intelligent devices. Synaptics products emphasize ease of use, small size, low power consumption, advanced functionality, durability and reliability, making them applicable to a multitude of markets, including mobile phones, notebook computers, PC peripherals, and portable entertainment devices such as MP3 players. Francis Lee Biography: http://engineering.ucdavis.edu/go/50years/innovators/FrancisLee.html

James Plummer, dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University, speaks at UC Davis on Tuesday, May 15, about what education is essential for producing tomorrow's engineers.

Deirdre Meldrum of Arizona State University speaks at the UC Davis College of Engineering on May 5, 2012, on biosginatures and health prevention.

This is part of the UC Davis College of Engineering's Distinguished Lecture Series by Ares Rosakis, Theodore von Karman professor of aeronautics and professor of mechanical engineering; and chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He says directly studying earthquakes presents a host of insurmountable difficulties, the least of which is our inability to trigger earthquakes of various magnitudes at will and the lack of means of scrutinizing the behavior at depth while the quake propagates. Ares' lab has developed techniques to produce miniature (or surrogate) laboratory earthquakes and follow their progress with high-speed imaging tools.

This talk was given by Jerry M. Woodall, National Medal of Technology Laureate and the Barry and Patricia Epstein Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University.

Elaine S. Oran, senior scientist for Reactive Flow Physics from the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington D.C., talks about the research being conducted at her lab.

Subhash Mahajan from the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University, presents a lecture on "Self-Assembled Nanostructures in Mixed III-V and Group III Nitride Layers and Their Influence on Electronic and Optical Properties." His research covers two thematic areas: structure-property relationships in functional materials and deformation behavior of solids.

Astronaut Stephen Robinson, recently returned from a mission on space shuttle Endeavor, spoke at Giedt Hall on April 9. The UC Davis alumnus's talk was titled "Heavy Construction Made Weightless — Building the International Space Station." The Endeavor crew delivered and helped to install an expansion of the space station that would increase the station's living and working area, and also add a windowed cupola that offers amazing views.

Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of research with Hewlett-Packard, discusses future research at HP. Before joining HP, he was the engineering dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests are in very large-scale-integration, computer-aided design; parallel computing; and compilers.

UC Davis College of Engineering alumnus Francis Lee is the former CEO and current board chair of Synaptics in Santa Clara. The company designs and produces the sensing technology in more than 60 percent of the touch pads in laptops, smart phones, MP3 players and other devices. Lee presents a talk on "A Discussion of 'Human Interface' Technology and Interaction"