EE chairman seeks greater involvemant from alumni

The first six months of Peter Ramadge's term as chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering have been spent weaving a tighter bond with alumni.

Peter Ramadge

"The philosophy hasn't changed," Professor Ramadge said. "But we've started some new initiatives."

Among these aims is the revision of the departmental Web pages, specifically the alumni pages.

The department is forming a new advisory council, consisting of 10 electrical engineering (EE) alumni ranging from the class of '55 to the class of '91, to help the department sculpt a vision and actualize goals. The first official meeting of the advisory council will be held in April.

In quite a literal sense, Professor Ramadge has gone to great lengths to reach alumni, traveling across the country with a mission to describe and garner support for new projects. The completion of the Friend Center for Engineering Education opened space in the E-Quad, which the EE department intends to convert into new lab space. Professor Ramadge has already begun meeting with architects to discuss renovations.

Professor Ramadge has received encouragement and support from many alumni. He was especially pleased by a certain e-mail from a former student who congratulated him on his appointment.

"This one just made me smile," Professor Ramadge said. "It read: 'Although you taught the course that kicked my butt, you were always my favorite EE professor.'"

Despite all his new duties as chair, Professor Ramadge still makes time for his research, and his students in ELE488: Image Processing and Transmission and ELE530: Theory of Detection and Estimation.

"The first year of being chair is hectic," he admitted. "I'll just be working extra hard this year."

Christodoulos Floudas, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Optimization, a six-volume reference work.

Optimization problems are ubiquitous in the mathematical modeling of real-world systems and cover a broad range of applications.

Encyclopedia of Optimization introduces readers to a complete set of topics that show the spectrum of recent research activities and the richness of ideas in the development of theories, algorithms, and the applications of optimization.

"The Encyclopedia of Optimization aims at serving as an important reference for all parts of optimization," writes the publisher, Kluwer Academ-ic Publishers. "The encyclopedia provides an important benchmark in the expanding and broad-reaching field of optimization. It is directed to a diverse audience of students, scientists, engineers, and, in general, to any decision maker and problem solver in academia, business, industry, and government who is concerned with aspects of optimization theory, algorithms, and applications."

More information about the Encyclopedia of Optimization is available on the Web at: www.WKAP.nl/

Christodoulos Floudas, professor in the Department of Chemcial Engineering, has received the 2001 Professional Progress Award for Outstanding Progress in Chemical Engineering.

Photo by Frank Wojciechowski Chemical Engineering Professor Christodoulos Floudas received the 2001 Professional Progress Award for Outstanding Progress in Chemical Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for his outstanding progress in research.

This award is given annually by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in recognition of outstanding progress in research by a member of the profession under 45 years of age.

Professor Floudas was honored for his seminal contributions to research on the theory, methods, and applications of deterministic global optimization in chemical process system engineering, computational chemistry, and molecular biology. He is an internationally recognized leader in the field of systems engineering and global optimization.

Professor Floudas is the author of two textbooks: Nonlinear and Mixed-Integer Optimization: Fundamentals and Applications (1995) and Deterministic Global Optimization: Theory, Methods, and Applications (2000). In addition, he has co-authored more than 100 scientific papers.

In recent years, Professor Floudas has applied the techniques of deterministic global optimization to the protein-folding problem, which is widely regarded as one of the major scientific challenges in computational chemistry and structural biology.

Edgar Choueiri *91, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was elected an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). In addition, he was appointed associate editor of the Journal of Propulsion and Power.

Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe was named the Theodora Shelton Pitney Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Professor Rodriguez-Iturbe came to Princeton in 1999.

Dudley Saville was named the Stephen Macaleer '63 Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Professor Saville came to Princeton in 1968.

Alexander J. Smits, chairman of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Fellows are individuals of distinction in aeronautics or astronautics, who have made notable, valuable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology. Professor Smits came to Princeton in 1981.

Computer science professor Richard Lipton made significant contributions to the field of computer science. He transferred to emeritus status, effective Oct. 1, 2001.

Richard Lipton, professor of computer science, transferred to emeritus status, effective Oct. 1, 2001. Professor Lipton has made significant contributions to a range of research in the field of computer science, including improved methods of searching stored information and investigations into using the biological molecules DNA and RNA as the foundations of computing devices.

Professor Lipton came to Princeton with the rank of professor in 1980 after holding tenured positions at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University. He received a 1968 B.Sc. degree from Case Western Reserve University and a 1973 Ph.D. degree from Carnegie-Mellon University.

During his time at Princeton, Professor Lipton also worked with industry, serving as director of the Matsushita Information Technology Laboratory in 1991 and 1992 and as consulting chief scientist at Bellcore since 1996.

Professor Lipton was elected a fellow in 1997 of the Association for Computing Machinery and is a past president of that organization's Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory.