Quantum

Sheryl Grace AWARDING GRACE

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Professor Sheryl Grace received the 2001 Aeronautics and Astronautics National Faculty Advisor Award. The award is presented to a faculty advisor who has made outstanding contributions in local, regional, or national activities. Grace was cited for rejuvenating the Boston University student chapter, which has twice won the Most Outstanding Chapter Award.

CAREER AWARD GRANT

Harley Johnson, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He will use the five-year, $375,000 award to develop theoretical and computational models for mechanical effects on optoelectronic devices. “My project is ‘strain effects on photonic device properties across length scales.’ Strain, or mechanical deformation, often results from processing of these optoelectronic devices. It is enhanced by defects and interfaces in the material and the effects show up over many length scales. I will study these problems from the atomic or subnanometer length scale, up to the micrometer length scale in structures such as MEMS micromirrors,” Johnson says.

BIGIO JOINS FACULTY

Irving J. Bigio was appointed professor in the Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments in February 2001. His research interests include medical applications of optics, lasers, and spectroscopy; biomedical optics and biophotonics; applied spectroscopy; and nonlinear optics, quantum electronics, and laser physics.

He was a scientific staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1974 to 2000, serving as the laser science program manager and leader of the Laser Science and Applications Group from 1988 to 1994. A fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, Bigio holds several patents for biomedical optics instrumentation. He has received three R&D-100 Awards for the development of optical devices for biomedical applications and the 1996 Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT?

The recently published map of the human genome not only heralds possible breakthroughs in health and medicine, but has also given us sobering new information about what it means to be human. Despite our self-centered view of the universe, it turns out that the human genetic blueprint is not all that different from that of the fruit fly, the roundworm, or even lowly yeast.

This information was uncovered, in part, by Joseph Szustakowski (’01), a biomedical engineering graduate student working in the lab of Assistant Professor Zhiping Weng, in association with Professor Simon Kasif. Szustakowski compared the human genome with those of the fruit fly, the round-worm, and yeast and found that we share slightly more than half of our genes with the fly, a bit less than half with the worm, and about a quarter with yeast. This makes sense, says Szustakowski, since human predecessors diverged from yeast in the evolutionary process much further back in time than either the worm or the fly.

Szustakowski’s work is included in the special February 15 issue of Nature, which is devoted to the human genome. He also presented the work in poster form at BU’s Science Day 2001, a forum for research by graduate students, in late March.

— Joan Schwartz

Kimani Toussaint (’99,’04), a doctoral student in electrical engineering and a graduate of the Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP) with a master’s in the same subject, recently got some good news. He received a Gates Millennium Fellowship, which will cover his tuition as he works for the next three to four years toward a Ph.D. at ENG.


AWARDING GRACE Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Professor Sheryl Grace received the 2001 Aeronautics and Astronautics National Faculty Advisor Award. The award is presented to a faculty advisor who has made outstanding contributions in local, regional, or national activities. Grace was cited for rejuvenating the Boston University student chapter, which has twice won the Most Outstanding Chapter Award. CAREER AWARD GRANT Harley Johnson, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He will use the five-year, $375,000 award to develop theoretical and computational models for mechanical effects on optoelectronic devices. “My project is ‘strain effects on photonic device properties across length scales.’ Strain, or mechanical deformation, often results from processing of these optoelectronic devices. It is enhanced by defects and interfaces in the material and the effects show up over many length scales. I will study these problems from the atomic or subnanometer length scale, up to the micrometer length scale in structures such as MEMS micromirrors,” Johnson says. BIGIO JOINS FACULTY Irving J. Bigio was appointed professor in the Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments in February 2001. His research interests include medical applications of optics, lasers, and spectroscopy; biomedical optics and biophotonics; applied spectroscopy; and nonlinear optics, quantum electronics, and laser physics. He was a scientific staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1974 to 2000, serving as the laser science program manager and leader of the Laser Science and Applications Group from 1988 to 1994. A fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, Bigio holds several patents for biomedical optics instrumentation. He has received three R&D-100 Awards for the development of optical devices for biomedical applications and the 1996 Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT? The recently published map of the human genome not only heralds possible breakthroughs in health and medicine, but has also given us sobering new information about what it means to be human. Despite our self-centered view of the universe, it turns out that the human genetic blueprint is not all that different from that of the fruit fly, the roundworm, or even lowly yeast. This information was uncovered, in part, by Joseph Szustakowski (’01), a biomedical engineering graduate student working in the lab of Assistant Professor Zhiping Weng, in association with Professor Simon Kasif. Szustakowski compared the human genome with those of the fruit fly, the round-worm, and yeast and found that we share slightly more than half of our genes with the fly, a bit less than half with the worm, and about a quarter with yeast. This makes sense, says Szustakowski, since human predecessors diverged from yeast in the evolutionary process much further back in time than either the worm or the fly. Szustakowski’s work is included in the special February 15 issue of Nature, which is devoted to the human genome. He also presented the work in poster form at BU’s Science Day 2001, a forum for research by graduate students, in late March. — Joan Schwartz Kimani Toussaint (’99,’04), a doctoral student in electrical engineering and a graduate of the Late Entry Accelerated Program (LEAP) with a master’s in the same subject, recently got some good news. He received a Gates Millennium Fellowship, which will cover his tuition as he works for the next three to four years toward a Ph.D. at ENG.
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