Spring 2006 Special Topics Courses

AEROSPACE & MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

ENG AM 700 A1 - Fluid-Structure Interaction (McDaniel)

This course will investigate the interaction of sound with structures. A primary focus will be on the acoustic radiation and scattering from elastic structures such as plates and shells.

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

ENG BE 500 A1- Natural Computation and Biological Systems (Kasif)

This course designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students and is aimed to acquire logical and rational frameworks to bioengineering design and modeling, the ability to abstract biological processes and their properties, reason about natural computation in a computational setting and learn to translate these insights into a program that will simulate complex behavior that mimics biological systems. The course will also involve a team project, class presentations by students and develop leadership, independent thought, engineering design and planning skills. The course will use one or more biological system as a platform for discussion as well as computational artifacts inspired by natural computation. It is particularly of interest to students interested in molecular engineering, tissue engineering, neuroscience, genomic engineering, system biology, biocomputing and computer-aided surgery. 4 Credits.

ENG BE 500 A2 - The Pathophysiology of Major Disease: An Introduction to Biomedicine (Herant)

Prereq: A course in human physiology. Introduces the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of major disease burdens in the US such as myocardial infarction, renal failure etc. Emphasizes current clinical issues impacted by biomedical engineering. Each lecture is to be complemented by presentation, discussion, and analysis of recent articles from top tier medical journals reporting clinical trials or epidemiological surveys. 4 Credits

ENG BE 500 A3 - Practical Optical Microscopy of Biological Materials

(Mertz & Allen)

In this course, we will explore the theory and practice of modern light microscopy while utilizing a variety of imaging methods applicable to understanding cellular function. Students will have the opportunity to use laser scanning confocal as well as wide field imaging and near field imaging to address experimental questions of ion fluxes in cells, protein dynamics and association, and the power of phase and interference techniques to enhance the detection of structure in low contrast biological material. Exploration and discussion of detector technology, signals and signal processing, spectral separation methods and physical mechanisms used to determine protein associations and protein diffusion in cells are integrated throughout the course. 4 credits

ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING

ENG SC 500 A1 - Statistical Theory of Communication (Ishwar)

Concepts of source and channel; Models for sources and channels (memoryless and with memory, discrete and continuous); Idea of block encoding and decoding (sources and channels); Notions of source compression rate and channel transmission rate; Constraints of source distortion and channel cost; Law of large numbers and notions of typicality; Entropy, cross-entropy, and mutual-information; Random coding, random binning, and information inequalities; Fundamental limits of source compression (distortion versus rate) and channel transmission (rate versus cost); linear source and channel codes; Universal source and channel coding; Source and channel reliability functions (error exponents); Variable length source and channel coding; Channel coding with noiseless feedback and source coding with noiseless feedforward; Shannon's source-channel separation theorem as the foundation of modern point-to-point digital communication; Bits as currency of information exchange in point-to-point communication; Measure-matching and uncoded transmission; Source and channel coding as functional duals.

ENG SC 500 A3 – Subsurface Sensing – (Saleh)

Introduction to subsurface imaging using electromagnetic, optical, X-ray, and acoustic waves. Transverse and axial imaging using localized probes (confocal scanning, time of flight, and interferometric techniques). Multiview tomographic imaging: computed axial tomography, diffraction tomography, diffuse optical tomorgraphy, electrical impedance tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging. Image reconstruction and inverse problems. Hyperspectral and multisensor imaging.

ENG SC 700 A1 – Nanophotonics - (Dal Negro/Swan/Unlu/Saleh)

The course Nanophotonics is a graduate student level class that covers fundamental aspects and state of the art research topics related to the physics and the device applications of nano-scale optics and photonic structures. The goal of the Nanophotonics course is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the properties of optical fields confined and generated in nanoscale environments. Fundamental aspects of light-matter interaction in dielectrics and in metals, semiconductor quantum nanostructures, light transport in photonic bandgaps and complex photonic structures will be discussed and state of the art technological applications such as Near field Optical Microscopy techniques will be presented.