September 9, 2019

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

James Fienup, the Robert E. Hopkins Professor of Optics, “exemplifies the best we expect of faculty,” says Scott Carney, director of The Institute of Optics. “Rarely is a member of the faculty able to so excel in teaching, research, leadership, and service.” So it was an honor for me to present Jim with the Hajim School Lifetime Achievement Award at our annual reception last week. Jim is one of the world’s leading experts in phase retrieval. He is the one NASA turns to when the panels of its space telescopes need to be realigned and synchronized to incredibly precise tolerances once they are in orbit. The phase retrieval algorithms he and his team developed helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope’s infamous “nearsightedness” when it was first launched in 1990. Since 2004 he’s served as a member of the Product Integrity Team for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which will need phase retrieval to align the 18 segments of the primary mirror. Jim is also an outstanding mentor. And one of the most scientifically honest and ethical individuals you will ever meet. Read more here. And please join me in congratulating Jim.

Continuing our look at some of the exciting grants our faculty have received lately:

Since their first observation of terahertz (THz) wave generation from liquid water under optical excitation two years ago, Xi-Cheng Zhang, the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics, and members of his lab have received grants from the Army Research Office ($648,000), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research ($460,000), and now from National Science Foundation ($368,000). In this newest grant, Xi-Cheng’s lab will build on its previous work by focusing on THz generation from a carefully selected range of liquids by using femtosecond laser induced micro-plasma. The higher molecular density of liquids, compared to air, means more charged particles can be provided in the same ionized volume. Liquids also pose fewer restrictions on the bandwidth of THz pulses that can be generated, compared to solids. This could greatly enhance the possible applications of terahertz waves, which are at the far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Though largely undeveloped, they have attracted increased attention because of their ability to nondestructively pass through solid objects, including those made of cloth, paper, wood, plastic, and ceramics, and produce images of the interiors of the objects. Additionally, the energy of a terahertz photon is weaker than an x-ray photon.Unlike x-rays, terahertz waves are non-ionizing—they do not have enough energy to remove an electron from an atom—so they do not have the same harmful effects on human tissue and DNA. Because of these abilities, terahertz waves have unique applications in imaging and spectroscopy—everything from discovering bombs in suspicious packages, to identifying murals hidden beneath coats of paint, to detecting tooth decay. Recently, Xi-Cheng visited Shanxi Museum in Xian, and met Museum Heritage Preservation staff on THz wave testing for the wall paintings in the ancient tombs dating back thousands of years ago.
Historically, computers have made a sharp distinction between fast, volatile working memory—usually dynamic random access memory (DRAM)—and slow, nonvolatile storage—disks or, more recently, flash drives. But technology is changing in ways that may blur that distinction. DRAM is now as dense as it is going to get, and when used at the scale of big data centers, requires huge amounts of electricity in order to be refreshed every few milliseconds. At the same time, modern applications are spending more and more of their time and energy moving data between permanent storage and transient memory. Successors to DRAM—Intel Optane is an example — have the intriguing property that they maintain their content when the power is off, just as disk and flash do. So, does the division between working memory and permanent memory even make sense anymore?That’s a question that Sandhya Dwarkadas, the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor and Chair of Computer Science, and Michael Scott, the Arthur Gould Yates Professor of Engineering, will address through a $1.1 million National Science Foundation grant. The goal is to develop new ways to organize and access data, to automate its movement and placement, and to protect it from accidental loss or corruption in platforms ranging from individual mobile or desktop machines to rack-level systems with “disaggregated” memory blades. Read more here.

Reminder: Students, junior faculty, early career researchers, and entrepreneurs have until this Wednesday, September 11, to apply to enter this year’s Falling Walls competition. Participants each pitch an innovative idea — highlighting a breakthrough that creates a positive impact on science and society — in just three minutes on October 8 in the Feldman Ballroom. The winner will represent the University at the International Falling Walls Finale in Berlin. Questions? Contact Adele Coelho. As I mentioned earlier, two Hajim PhD students — Kilean Lucas and Ryan Trombetta ’19 — have won trips to Berlin by winning this competition in the past, so I hope there will be plenty of applicants from our school this year!

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman