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November 2002
Friends of
the College of Engineering,
Chang-Lin
Tien was a talented, tireless teacher and a favorite with
students. Even in his years as chancellor at UC Berkeley,
Tien made time to mentor graduate students and teach classes
in mechanical engineering.
Peg
Skorpinski photo
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Chancellor Robert
Berdahl said it so well for all of us when he wrote: "Last night
the light that so brilliantly shines from our great university flickered
for a moment. One of our brightest leaders and dearest friends has
left us." As most of you already know by now, our former Chancellor,
colleague, and friend Chang-Lin Tien, passed away Tuesday night,
Oct. 29, 2002. He will never be forgotten. A campus memorial service
will be held Thursday,
Nov. 14, from 3-4 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley
campus. A reception will follow. Colleagues, friends, and admirers
of this great engineer are invited to attend.
I spent most of this last month on the road, visiting executives
and alumni in Japan, Taiwan, China, Canada, Europe and the US. I
also had the opportunity to spend a day with the deans of the Big
10+ US engineering schools. Naturally, many of our discussions centered
upon the topics of information technology, biotechnology and new
materials (or nanotechnology.) I was particularly struck by the
level of investment being made in these areas, and especially in
information technology and its applications, by our international
colleagues, often through government-initiated university/industry/government
collaborative projects (for example, the SiSoft
Project in Taiwan).
CITRIS
Director and EECS Professor Ruzena Bajcsy was named one
of the fifty most important women scientists in the nation
by Discover magazine.
Peg
Skorpinski photo
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We are now entering a period when the years of investment made in
developing the fundamental components and understanding in information
and communication technology is about to pay off in the form of
many new, interdisciplinary industry-enabling applications. At the
same time, a number of key global technology centers seem to be
investing far more aggressively in the research and development
needed to reveal this future than is evident here in the United
States. This concern was reinforced for me when a colleague forwarded
a link to a CNN/Fortune Magazine article titled, "Will
the U.S. Fall behind in Tech?" Based on my own anecdotal experiences
of late, I certainly share the concerns of the executives quoted
in this article!
Our faculty, students
and alumni continue to bring great credit to our University and
to the College. Highlights this month include CITRIS Director
and EECS Professor Ruzena Bajcsy being selected as one of the fifty
most important women scientists in the nation by Discover
magazine and our alumnus Daniel Jurafsky (Linguistics '83, EECS
'92) as the latest Berkeley-affiliated winner of a MacArthur Fellowship
Grant. We have also featured Daniel and
his work in this issue of Lab Notes. Congratulations
to you both! Last but by no means least, congratulations are
also due to our own College "writer in residence" David Pescovitz—author
of Lab Notes and a graduate of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism—for
winning the 2002 Foresight
Institute Prize in Communication for his work in "helping the
public better understand molecular nanotechnology and other key
emerging technologies of high social or environmental impact." Well
done, David!
Petra and I look forward to seeing many of you at our upcoming Distinguished
Engineering Alumni Award celebration and dinner on Saturday,
November 16th at the Claremont Hotel.
Best regards from the College, and a very special Go Bears!
in honor of Chang-Lin.
/rich
A. Richard Newton
Dean, College of Engineering and
the Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering
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