Five Professors Emeriti, Ex-Staff Member Receive Clark School’s Outstanding Commitment Award

Profs. Emeriti Lee D. Davission, Robert O. Harger, Hung C. Lin, James H. Pugsley, David Simons (posthumous) and ex-staff member Mr. Victor G. Rinker have been honored with the A. James Clark School of Engineering’s 1998 Oustanding Commitment Awards.

This award, presented to them “in sincere appreciation of their distinguished service to the College of Engineering,” will culminate in a wall to be constructed outside of the Engineering Classroom Building. Recipients’ names will be engraved upon the new structure.

FSQP Now Available at 1000 Sites Worldwide, CFSQP Licensed to Cadence

The Feasible Sequential Quadratic Programming (FSQP) algorithm, a high-quality optimization tool developed by an EE/ISR research team headed by André Tits, is or has been in use in more than 1000 sites and 55 countries worldwide, and was recently licensed to Cadence Design Systems. Drs. J. Zhou (Ph.D., ‘92) and C. Lawrence (Ph.D., ‘98) played an instrumental role in this development.

With versions written in C (CFSQP) and FORTRAN (FFSQP), FSQP is used for directly tackling optimization problems with: multiple competing linear/nonlinear objective functions (minimax), linear/nonlinear inequality constraints, and linear/nonlinear equality constraints.

The CFSQP source code has been licensed to Cadence for use in its “Resolve Optimizer for Analog Artist,” in an agreement negotiated by the University’s Office of Technology Liaisons.
FSQP has been applied to problems in all areas of engineering and sciences, as well in medicine, economics, finances, and other fields. It has been tested and run successfully on most platforms, including Sun SPARCs, DECs, and IBM personal computers. The product is widely available over the Internet, and has been upgraded several times over the past ten years.
For-profit organizations may obtain FSQP/CFSQP free of charge for a three month evaluation period. If interested, please contact Ms. Judy Guzewich (jg247@umail.umd.edu) at the Office of Technology Liaisons, University of Maryland at College Park. Non-profit organizations may obtain a copy of the main source code files cfsqp.c and/or ffsqp.f free of charge via e-mail (andre@isr.umd.edu). The remainder of the CFSQP/FFSQP distribution is available at: http://www.isr.umd.edu/Labs/CACSE/FSQP/fsqp_dist.html.

Distinguished Lecturers Garmire, Sangiovanni-Vincentelli Visit Department

The Department continued its successful Distinguished Lecturer Series this fall with two prominent speakers.
Dr. Elsa Garmire, Professor of Engineering at the Thayer School at Dartmouth College, delivered a talk entitled “Lasers and Optics in Information Technology Systems,” on Friday, November 13.

Dr. Garmire’s lecture reviewed the state of the art in lasers and optics, describing some of the promising research advances in these areas, and outlined the conclusions reached in the National Research Council’s 1998 study “Harnessing Light,” of which she was a participant.

A special session, co-sponsored by the Student Women in Engineering program, was held that afternoon for women engineering students. Shortly after, a round table discussion was held for graduate students and faculty.

Dr. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, delivered a talk entitled “System-on-Silicon: Trends and Challenges,” on Friday, December 11.
Dr. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli presented the principles of IP-based design, and underlined the challenges to be faced in making this approach technically and commercially feasible. His talk was well-received by faculty, students, and several members of both local industry and government organizations.
During the afternoon that day, Dr. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli hosted a special round table discussion for both graduate students and faculty.

Three Faculty Members Finalists for Invention of the Year Award

Three regular and affiliated EE faculty members were finalists for the Office of Technology Liaisons’ Invention of the Year Award, presented to winners at the 11th Annual Invention of the Year Reception on April 30.

Dr. H.C. Lin, as reported in the last issue of Connections, was recognized for a “Noise Reduction in Headphones” technology, which he developed with student Yu “Andy” Wang.
Dr. Anthony Ephremides was nominated for “Power Allocation and Quality Service Control to Enhance Capacity of CDMA Network Voice and Data,” a new algorithm that increases wireless network capacity by analyzing usage demographics and power consumption. The technology was developed in conjunction with graduate student Deepak Ayyagari and Mr. Samuel Resheff, from GTE.

Dr. James Hendler was recognized for his invention “PARKA-DB,” a project designed to develop a high performance knowledge representation system that deviates from the norm by using a database-management system to provide run-time storage advantages. Co-inventors include Dr. Kilian Stoffel, Merwyn Taylor, David Rager, and Dr. Brian Kettler.
Twelve other faculty members were also cited for technological innovation at the ceremony.