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ACCORDING TO

THE DEAN

Wel come t o our f i rst

issue of IM PACT, a new

publ i cat ion desi gned t o

ref l ect t he pace of

change at t he School of

Engi neeri ng and Appl i ed

Science at U. Va. A syou l l

see f rom t hi si ssue,

t he proj ect sour f acul t y

membersare pursui ng

wi l l shape t he way we

l i ve f or yearst o come.

There hassi mpl y never

been a bet t er, more

exci t i ng t i me t o be an

engi neer at Vi rgi ni a.

Richard W. Miksad

Biomedical engineering at the University of

Virginia has switched to high gear, thanks to two

sizable grants from the Whitaker Foundation totaling

$10.5 million. This is a ringing endorsement for biomedical engineering at the University

of Virginia from the largest nonprofit foundation in the world devoted exclusively to

advances in this field.

In making these awards, the Whitaker Foundation recognized the tremendous strides

the department has made over the past decade, declares biomedical engineering Professor

Tom Skalak. We are already ranked fourteenth in the n ation. This gift makes a place in

the top ten a real possibility.

The departments expertise in vascular engineering and medical imaging has important

applications for the fight against heart disease and cancer, the two leading causes of death in

the nation. With the Whitaker grant in hand, the dep artment will hire six faculty members

and up grade its capabilities in microsystems technology, as well as in targeted med ical imag-

ing, genetic engineering, and tissue engineering. In October, the department will be breaking

ground on a new biomedical engineering building, partially funded by the Whitaker grant.

To take advantage of this growth, the department has launched an ambitious series of

educational initiatives, including a new undergraduate minor in biomedical engineeringand a new five-year combined bachelors and masters degree program leading to careers

in biomedical industries. The departments existing doctoral program is also being

strengthened.

This is not the first time the Whitaker Foundation has singled out the department for

special notice. In 1995, the department earned a Special Opp ortunity Award of $750,000

for a program in wound prevention an d repair. The following year, Whitaker presented it

with a $1 million Special Opportunity Award to support genetic engineering targeting

vascular disease.

Skalak, who received the first award, used it to create an interdisciplinary research team

that, with student trainees, is working to uncover the mechanical and biological principles

behind skin wounds found in chronic hospitals. About 5 million patients develop pressure

ulcers annually in the United States, with costs reaching $9 billion in medical charges alone.

Their research can also be applied to guide blood vessel growth and to treat trauma

wounds, heart failure, and neurological injuries.

Klaus Ley, another Whitaker award winner, has led

a team that developed a catheter-based

system to monitor vessel walls and track

the delivery of gene therapy.

This system could lead to tremendous

improvements in the success rates of

people undergoing angioplasty.

Our goal is to make a difference,

Skalak observes. And with support

from the Whitaker Foundation, we

have a greater opportunity to do so.

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T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f V i r g i n i a

SCHOOLOF ENGINEERING

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V O L U M E ON E

N U M B E R T W O

F A L L 9 9

The Depar tment of Biomedical Engineer ing on the Web.

Department of Biomedical Researchw w w .m ed.virg inia.e du / bm e /

Whitakers Partnership with University of Virginiaw w w.m ed.virginia.edu / bm e / w hitaker / index.htm l

Wound Prevention and Repair

yakko.b m e.v irginia.edu / w ound / index.h tm l

B I O M E D I C A L E N G I N E ER I N G

S CO RE S W HIT A K E R G RA NT

engineering at uva eng i neer i ng impactw w w . s e a s . v i r g i n i a . e d u / i m p a c t

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eng i neer i n

When the U.Va. solar car moved up to the start ing l ine at Sunrayce 99, it was alr

winner. The compe tition just to qualify for this prestigious solar-powered race, s

by the U.S. Department of Energy, General Motors, and EDS, is intense, and the

person U.Va. team succeede d i ts first t ime out.

Each car had to meet stringent design cri teria covering size, braking performance

turn radius, and even the size and clari ty of the windshield. Facing a steep learn

compared to teams that had competed in the past , the U.Va. crew members threw

selves into the project. Some students gave up their Christmas vacation to remain

Charlottesvil le and work on the car, sometimes staying up all night and napping

in the p roject office.

Its been an eye-opening experience for everyone involved, not

Cahen, assistant dean and professor of materials science. Studen

the car from scratch, making ha rd trade-offs on structural materia

aerodynamics, and the size and shape of the solar array. They ev

backers to contribute the tens of thousands of dollars i t costs to m

effort of this kind.

This years Sunrayce brought together forty vehicles designed, bui

tested by students from twenty-nine North American colleges and

Starting from Washington, D.C., on June 20, one of the longest an

light-fi lled days o f the year, i t wo und through five states between

Washington, D.C., and Orlando, Florida, covering 1,359 miles. Afthe U.Va. car joined just eleven others at the Epcot Center, where

viewed by thousands of visi tors.

Back in Charlottesville, students are already compiling lessons lea

the next U.Va. team, which will be prep aring an entry for Sunrayc

Learning about Internet engineering is not the same as practicing Internet engineering.

Thanks to a $1 million gift of equipment from MCI WORLDCOM and Cisco Systems,

engineering students at U.Va. will have the opp ortunity to roll up their sleeves and really get

to know the Net.

With 12 Cisco 7000 backbone routers and other networking equipment, the school has wired i ts

own simulated Internet the Virginia Internet Teaching Laband created a new fourth-year cours

in Internet en gineering. The lab is called the VINTLab in hono r of Vint Cerf, the MCI WORLDCOM

senior vice president who played a major role in creating the Internet and who was instrumental

in creating the lab.

There are very few schools in the country where undergraduates have this type of first handexposure to the network

hardware and software

or get this type of head

start in one of the fastest

growing fields in the nation.

S T UDE NT RA CE RS CO MP E T E

IN S UNRA Y CE

M C I W O R L D C O M A N D C I SC O F U N D I N T E R N ET L A B

AWARDED

DARDE N CRE ATES S CHOLARS HI P FUND

Thanksto a $1.0 million trust created by Colgate W. Darden III, the

engineering school will have an additional source of scholarshipsfor

students demonstrating financial need. The trust will be used to

establi sh the Barbara B. Darden Endowed Scholarship Fund, which

will grow $50,000 a year for 20 years until the scholarship fund totals

about $2 million, including investment returns.

In other words, each year from now until 2019, the amount of

scholarships available to engineering studentsfrom this one source

will continue to grow, making it possible for the school to attract the

best studentsno matt er what their circumstances.

g ra n t s

Internet: www.cs.virginia.edu /~cs551ie/

Internet: www.mane.virginia.edu /~solar /

CLASSROOMin t he

i f y o u r e a w o m a n

Traffic seems to have a l ife of i ts own, flowing smoothly one minute

and grinding to a halt the next. Its frustrating for commuters, who find

themselves inching along at 65 feet a m inute, not 65 miles an ho ur.

And its a challenge for transportation managers, charged with freeing up

existing roads and eliminating congestion.

A new laboratory in the Dep artment of Civil Engineeringthe Smart

Travel Lab is designed to help transportation managers and drivers al ike

get the upper hand on traffic. From computer terminals in

Charlottesville, Smart Travel Lab researchers can tap into real-time data

and images from 203 sensors along Interstates 44, 64, and 264 in

Hampton Roads a nd app roximately 2,000 to 3,000 sensors on traffic

signals in Northern Virginia.

But watching bott lenecks form on a computer screen is not the same

as doing something abo ut them. U.Va. researchers are determined to find

ways of making sense of the data once i t is collected. If we can find

better ways to process and analyze this data, we can create decision-

support tools to help people understand and use i t , says Brian Smith,

research assistant professor and director of the lab.

Here s an examp le. When heading off traffic t ie-ups, seconds count. Accordingly, Smith and his colleagues are using a datamart

design that al lows predefined queries to be run at regular intervals, generating subsets of the overall data. Traffic applications can

then query these smaller tables to extract the needed information instead of searching through a multigigabyte data warehouse.

The Smart Travel Lab is the ne west unit in the e ngineering schools Center for Transporta tion Studies. It is also the centerp iece of

the schools contribution to the Center for Intell igent Transportation, a consortium that also includes transportation research centersat George Mason University, Virginia Tech, and the Virginia Transportation Research Co uncil. U.Va. will receive about $4 million

of the consortium s six-year, $12 million budget.

As a U.Va. und erg ra d, the extraordinary

initiat ive that has m ade Tim Koogle one of

the Internets most successful entrepreneurs

was already on display. When his father

could afford only part of the cost of his

son s education, Koogle earned the rest by

repairing carsand became one of the

town s best mechanics. The experience

confirmed Koogle s penchant for taking on

new challenges.

In graduate school at Stanford, where he was

given a full scholarship, Koogle found student

life confining. His solution: move off campus

and start his own business. By the time he

received his doctorate, he had already saved

enough money to buy his own house.

Koogle developed yet another business,

which he sold to Motorola. He then spent nine

years making his mark in the companys

operations and venture capital groups.

Moving on again, he took a three-year st int

as president of Intermec, a Seatt le-based firm

that invents bar code symbols. Under Koogles

leadership, Intermec sales rose 50 percent.

By 1995, when a corporate head hunter called

to tell him about a tiny company called Yahoo!,

Koogle was ready for yet another leap.

Koogle s practical wisdom transformed Yahoo!

from a company with just four employees into

one of the best-known Internet brands.

Although its a long way from Charlottesville

to the Silicon Valley, Koogle still retains the

unpretentious drive that marked him early for

success. And he freely gives some of the

credit to U.Va.: Both the rigorous technical

training in the engineering school and the

breadth of m y experiences at the University

have served me very well .

Enginee ring Grad s Sha pe the Net

Chip Perry (BS 75, MS 76) is president and CEO

of AutoConnect, one of the most successful autotrade

companies on the Internet. Steve Wadsworth

(BS 84) heads Disneys Buena Vista Internet Group,

soon to merge with Infoseek to form go.com.

in

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If Youre a Woman, Virginia Is a Great Place to Be an Engineer

U. Va. hasone of t he hi ghest percent agesof f emal e f acul t y membersi n t he count ry, i ncl udi ng ast ronaut Kat hy Thornt on and f ormer DARPA bossAni t a Jones.

Wi t h t hi ski nd of l eadershi p, i t i snot surpri si ng t hat women make up 27 percent of our ent eri ng cl assof undergraduat esand 22 percent of our graduat e st udent s,

one of t he hi ghest percent agesi n t he nat i on.

S M O O T H I N G O U T T R A F F I C J A M S

LAB

YAHOO! CEO TIM KOOGLE( BS73) graduated at the top of his engineering class, earning a room on

the Lawn, membership in the prestigious Raven Society, and election to the Omicron Delta Kappa

honorary en gineering society. My day s at U.Va. wer e am ong the best of m y life, he reports,

and very important to what Ive been able to achieve since then.

PROFILEa lu m n i

W A H O O H E A D S Y A H O O !

Internet: SmartTravelLab.virginia.edu /

w h e n h e a d i n g o f f

TRAFFIC T IE -UPS ,

s e c o n d s c o u n t

The school

has WIRED

ITS OWN

simulated

Internet

The school

has WIRED

ITS OWN

simulated

Internet

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e n g i n e e r i n g t h a t m a k e s a d i f f e r e n c e

The Universi ty of VirginiaSchool of Engineering and Applied ScienceThornton Hal lCharlottesvi l le, Virginia 22903

804 .924 .3072ww w.seas .v i rg i n i a .eduw w w . s e a s. v i r g i n ia . e d u / i m p a c t

w w w . s e a s . v i r g i n i a . e d uw w w . s e a s . v i r g i n i a . e d u / i m p a c t

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SCHOOL ST

The graduation rate f

engineering stude

isone of th e hig

nation at research u

One reason for

showing isour Office

Programs, which activ

a diverse body

and promotes th

w i t h m ent or i ng asw

and facu

b i o m e d i c a l e n g i n e e r i n g

W I N S M U L T I M I L L I O N D O L L A R

W H I T A K ER G R A N T !

f e a t u r e d i n s i d e

indu stry

CONNECTIONWith the creation of the Semiconductor Manufacturing

Information Technology Center at Do minion

Semiconductor, U.Va. has becom e one of the first

universities in the n ation to open a manufacturing

research lab within a semiconductor man ufacturing

facility. As a result, University researchers and

students have an extraordinary opportunity to work

directly on real-world fabrication issues.

A unique collaboration between the engineering

school, IBM, Dominion Semiconductor, and the Center

for Innovative Technology, the center und erscores

U.VA. LA UNCHES LAB AT DOMIN ION SEMI CONDUCTOR

the schools comm itment to assisting cutting-edge

enterprises solve complex manufacturing problems,

while satisfying their need for trained engineers.

The center is connected d irectly to data flowing

from Dominion Semiconductors 600,000-square-

foot fab in Manassas, Virginia, where researchers

will employ state-of-the-art data mining an d data

modeling for research into the production process.