Andre Tits, Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, has been elected Fellow of IEEE with the citation, "for contributions to optimization-based design and robust control."

In addition, Nariman Farvardin, Professor and Chair, has been elected Fellow of IEEE with the citation, "for contributions to source coding and quantization."

The department now has a total of 27 IEEE Fellows among its regular faculty members.

Promotions/Appointments

• Prof. Christopher Davis was appointed Director of the Gemstone Program, and Associate Dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
• Dr. Robert Harger was appointed Professor Emeritus of the department. Dr. Harger made significant contributions to the department, college and university-as an administrator, scholar and teacher.
• Dr. Joseph Mait, from the US Army Research Laboratory, was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor of the department.
• Prof. David Simons was appointed Associate Professor Emeritus of the department. Prof. Simons made substantial contributions to our department--as an educator, administrator, and scholar.

Invited Talks/Conferences

• Professor Rama Chellappa gave an expert summary talk at the Intl. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Munich, Germany, April 24, 1997. In addition, Chellappa was an invited speaker at the Norwegian National Conf. on Image Processing, Tromso, Norway, May 21, 1997. He was also an invited speaker at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Face Recognition, Stirling, Scotland, July 1, 1997.
• Professor Christopher Davis gave an invited plenary lecture titled "Fiber Near-Field Microscopy," at the 12th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors (OFS-12). In addition, Davis was a NATO-AGARD visiting lecturer in Turkey at Bilkent University, Ankara, and Bosphorus University in Istanbul, from October 9 - October 18.
• Professor Nariman Farvardin delivered a plenary talk titled, "Channel-Matched Source Coding vs. Joint Source-Channel Coding: Performance, Complexity and Robustness," in the 1997 Canadian Information Theory Workshop, Toronto, Canada, June 1997.
• Professor H.C. Lin presented an invited talk titled, "Multiple-Logic Digital Applications Using Resonant Tunneling Diodes," at the University of Illinois in Chicago, Nov. 13, 1997. Lin was invited as part of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science's Distinguished Lecturer Series.
• Professor John Melngailis delivered two invited talks titled "Ion Projection Lithography, " at NEC, Tsukuba, Japan, Nov. 13, 1997. and at Hitachi, Yokohama, Japan, on Nov. 14, 1997. He was also named Co-Editor for the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. Professors John Melngailis and Jon Orloff, along with Prof. Kenji Gamo of Osaka University, organized the workshop on Ion Beams and Applications, Osaka, Japan, Nov. 16-20.
• Prof. Uzi Vishkin gave an invited talk titled "An Idea Which Transcended Its Original Application: On a Technique for Parsing a String," at the University of Texas Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series, Austin, Texas, Nov. 17, 1997. In addition, Vishkin delivered a talk titled "Two Observations on Parallel Computing," at the University of Texas Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series, Austin, Texas, Nov. 18, 1997. He also presented an invited talk titled "From Algorithm Parallelism to Instruction-level Parallelism: an Encode-decode Chain Using Prefix-sum," at a workshop on Parallel and Distributed Algorithms, Dagstuhl, Germany, Sept. 8-12, 1997.

Focused Ion Beam Technology Short Course Offered

Department Professors John Orloff and John Melngailis, Affiliate Assistant Professor Joseph Bernstein, and seven other researchers offered a short course titled The Essentials of Focused Ion Beam (FIB) Technology, from October 6-9, 1997, here at Maryland.

Students came from around the world (two from Intel Israel, one from Siemens in Germany) to round out the sixteen-student instructional program. The course was broadcast via Instructional Television (ITV) to remote TV sites, including IBM, Quantum, the Sandia National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

FIB technology is an important tool in semiconductor device manufacturing. It is used for analysis and design work, as well as TEM preparation, surface analysis, and lithographic mask repair. Recently, focused ion beam milling has been used to manufacture magnetic heads for computer hard disks. Future potential applications in industry include FIB implantation and lithography.