Today's Daily Princetonian reports on new Google grants for two Princeton Engineering projects. Ed Felten received $400,000 for his research on preserving privacy in the face of sophisticated web-tracking technologies. Margaret Martonosi, Jennifer Rexford, Michael Freedman, and Mung Chiang received $100,000 for their project on Internet energy efficiency.
Read the full Prince story here.
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Starting Feb. 4, Princeton University engineering undergraduates are hosting weekly workshops for kids eight and up at the Princeton Public Library.
The workshops will be led by members of Princeton Engineering Education for Kids -- a k a PEEK. The kids will use a LEGO Mindstorm kit to build cars, catapults, and other fun stuff.
Find out more on centraljersey.com or on the library's children's page.
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David and James Billington had a fascinating public discussion recently about the humanities, engineering, and the future of America.
Two years apart in age, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and his older brother, the legendary Princeton engineering professor David P. Billington, both graduated from Princeton in 1950 (David having spent a yearlong stint as a Navy technician and James having skipped an academic year forward).
During the discussion, hosted by the Kansas City Public Library, the brothers reminisced that their father measured his wealth by books.
"In terms of happiness and satisfaction and just a good life, generally, it wasn't economic status, it wasn't ethnic origin, or any of these things," said David Bilington. " ... It was whether or not you were brought up in the proximity of books."
Read more in this account by Rachael Herndon in the University News or watch part of the conversation here (warning: audio quality is less than perfect).
A couple of fun facts about the Billingtons:
1. David Billington's book Power, Speed, and Form: Engineeers and the Making of the Twentieth Century (coathored with son David P. Billington Jr.) features a photo of the Billington brothers at the 1939 World's Fair (see above).
2. James Billington's future career as the Librarian of Congress may have had its origins in the comic book lending library he and his brother established as children at their home in Merion Pa.
By the way, Billington and fellow engineering professor Maria Garlock will discuss their book on Spanish engineer and builder Félix Candela Feb. 2 in the Lewis Library on the Princeton campus. Here is a video about a Candela exhibit curated by Billington and Garlock.
Photo courtesy David Bilington
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The current issue of U.S. 1 features a cover story on Princeton Power Systems, a company founded nine years ago by freshly minted Princeton engineering graduates.
Legendary entrepreneur Ed Zschau tells writer Barbara Figge Fox: "After eight years of building a strong technical foundation, customer relationships, and a highly capable and dedicated team, Princeton Power Systems is now on a path to becoming a very significant company serving both the alternative energy market and the military power applications market.”
Read the full story here. Photo of Darren Hammell courtesy Craig Terry via U.S. 1.
The solar-powered camels have legs.
A number of media outlets recently reported on a project in which Princeton engineers are helping to develop camel-mounted, solar-powered refrigerators to purvey medicines to rural parts of Africa.
“Camel convoys will deliver medicine and medical supplies, just as they traditionally have,” Ode Magazine wrote of the project, which is a collaboration between Kenyan-based Nomadic Communities Trust, Designmatters at California's Art Center College of Design and researchers at Princeton’s Institute of Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM).
“However," Ode continued, "the camels will now be equipped with lightweight, durable ergonomic saddles (made from bamboo) along with a saddleback structure. This structure holds a compartmented refrigerated unit and solar power generator. Thanks to these technologies basic medicines like vaccines (which require refrigeration) can be transported through harsh terrains, where roadways are few and far between. Once at the remote site, the solar power generator can also be used to power clinics.”
Nomadic Communities Trust has been using camels for years as mobile health clinics in remote desert communities in western Kenya, according to the Wired UK website. But efforts to deliver vaccines and medicines have been hampered by the lack of refrigeration.
Beginning in 2005, the coalition began developing a lightweight, solar-powered refrigerator capable of transporting medicines across the desert. The Princeton team is lead by Winston Soboyejo, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering,
“The design is simple but effective: the fridge itself is mounted atop a frame of hardened aluminum, which is lightweight yet able to support up to 136 kg of cargo,” Wired wrote. “A crystalline solar panel provides power to the refrigerator, provides lighting at night and runs monitors and video equipment for health education sessions.”
A resilient and inexpensive bamboo frame supports the system on the camels' humps.
The story was also picked up by Energy Boom and Inhabitat among others.
In the following video, Soboyejo talks about the project:
It's not every day that one of Princeton Engineering's faculty members is interviewed in the Catalan language by Catalan TV -- check out the embedded video interview at left with Sergio Verdú.
Verdú, a native of Barcelona, is a leading figure in information theory, the discipline at the interface between engineering and applied mathematics that drives innovation in many digital technologies. His research explores the fundamental limits of data transmission and compression systems. In 2007, Verdú became the youngest recipient of the Claude Shannon Award, the most prestigious prize in information theory, and also was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
In case you don't happen to speak Catalan, take a moment to read this interview (in English) with Verdú, which was published a couple of years ago by the Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Verdú talks about his childhood in Spain, about his affection for the United States (with the exception of baseball), and his pioneering doctoral research in the field of multiuser detection, done at the University of Illinois under the supervision of H. Vincent Poor, another leading researcher in information theory who is now dean of Princeton's School of Engineering (Verdú was Poor's second Ph.D. student). By the way, Poor is the co-recipient of a new National Science Foundation grant for research on the relationship between social and technological networks. His collaborators are fellow information theory expert Mung Chiang, sociologist Matthew Salganik, and political scientist Jacob Shapiro.
EQN can't help but quote directly some of the gems that Verdú offered in the Institute for Mathematical Sciences newsletter:
On reconciling the two fields of mathematics and engineering:
"Strangely enough, they are not very different because the way you approach problems is essentially the same in both fields: going back to the basics. As much as I can, I always try to avoid carrying a bag of tricks that I can apply from one problem to another... Like the Zen philosophy says, in the mind of the beginner the possibilities are endless."
On the importance of mathematical training for engineers:
"Mathematical training is like wealth -- nobody has enough of it."
On whether engineers focus on problems of practical concern to the exclusion of fundamental questions:
"Many of us who are working in theory are accused, more often than not, of doing exactly the opposite: of solving problems that are of no immediate practical concern and that may be relevant only in the distant future or never. Those of use who have followed in [Claude] Shannon's footsteps have an appreciation for beauty and elegance and for the fact that beautiful and elegant results sooner or later become practical."
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Princeton's Dean of the Faculty, David Dobkin, will join in a discussion this evening at Labyrinth Books on the intersection between poetry, mysticism, and science. Joining the conversation will be Scott McVay, founding director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the poet J.C. Todd and the cultural philosopher William Irwin Thompson. Thompson will read from his new book Still Travels: Three Long Poems (Wild River Books, 2009).
By the way, last month Princeton Engineering's Philip Holmes gave a reading at the Princeton Public Library along with fellow poets Paul Muldoon and Evie Shockley. Holmes has published four collections of poetry, including The Green Road (a Poetry Book Society recommendation).
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In the current issue of Chemistry World, Philip Ball calls proteins "Goldilocks molecules": everything has to be "just right" for them not to unravel. Proteins are sensitive to temperature, pressure, acid levels, and exposure to certain small molecules known as denaturants.
Why should we care how and why proteins behave? Because, Ball points out, understanding what makes proteins unravel is central to understanding what makes our earth habitable. It is also a driving force behind all manner of neurodegenerative diseases, from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's.
In his survey of cutting-edge protein folding research, Ball highlights work by Pablo Debenedetti and Frank Stillinger at Princeton and Peter Rossky at the University of Texas. Their lattice model (see image above) explores the nuanced way that temperature and pressure can destabilize proteins. For more on their research, conducted with former Princeton graduate student Bryan Patel and now continuing with postdoc Silvina Matysiak, read the full article here.
In the spring, Debenedetti and colleagues published research on a new way to freeze water.
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Princeton Engineering's Alexander Smits seems to have been popular among the media during the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics, which took place last week in Minneapolis.
The Pioneer Press quotes Smits on the aerodynamics of golf balls, which he says are one of "the most remarkable products of the industrial age."
In another article intriguingly titled "Wind Turbines Take a Lesson from Lance Armstrong" by ScienceNOW Daily News, Smits comments on a plan for arranging wind turbines much like a school of fish -- making them safer for migrating birds and reducing the amount of land they take up by 100-fold. Smits said the plan, co-devised by Princeton Engineering graduate John Dabiri, shows great promise. Here is more coverage from Discovery News, via MSNBC, and from the Mendo Coast Current.
By the way, Lex Smits is chief editor of efluids.com, whose media gallery features visualizations of cutting-edge fluid mechanics research that happens to be mesmerizingly gorgeous. Above is a screen grab of a simulation of a "wake of a low aspect ratio pitching plate." Studying such wakes helps researchers better understand the mechanisms that fish use to propel themselves. This image/animation depicts research by Smits that was published in the Journal of Fluid Dynamics.
Just for fun, don't miss Smits' video of dolphins playing with with bubble rings or the parabolic liquid jets shooting out of holes in this plastic bottle.
In other news, one of Smits' former graduate students, Beverley McKeon, now of Caltech, this fall received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. More about her research on PhysOrg.
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The Guardian newspaper pays tribute to Anthony Evans, "a world-leading materials scientist who pioneered the use of brittle materials in such wide-ranging applications as jet engines, space-shuttle tiles, silicon chips and vehicle armour." Evans, who has died at the age of 66 of cancer, was the author of more than 540 scientific publications and is one of the most referenced authors in materials science, engineering and physics.
From 1998 to 2002, Evans was the Gordon Wu Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton and also director of the Princeton Materials Institute.
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