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Ronald A. Rohrer, Cecil & Ida Green Chair and professor of engineering at SMU Lyle, honored with TAMEST membership

“I’ve stayed close to industry to be a practicing engineer and close to academia to conduct deeper research on hard problems.” — Ronald A. Rohrer.

Legendary inventor and scholar Ronald A. Rohrer, Cecil & Ida Green Chair and Professor of Engineering in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering, has been named to The Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Texas (TAMEST).

The nonprofit organization, founded in 2004, brings together the state’s top scientific, academic and corporate minds to support research in Texas.

The organization builds a stronger identity for Texas as an important destination and hub of achievement in these fields. Members of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the state’s nine Nobel Laureates comprise the 270 members of TAMEST. The group has 18 member institutions, including SMU, across Texas.

Rohrer joins three other distinguished SMU faculty members in TAMEST — Fred Chang, executive director of the Lyle School’s Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security; Delores Etter, founding director of the Lyle School’s Caruth Institute for Engineering Education and electrical engineering professor emeritus; and David Meltzer, Henderson-Morrison Chair and professor of prehistory in anthropology in Dedman College.

Considered one of the preeminent researchers in electronic design automation, Rohrer’s contributions to improving integrated circuit (IC) production have spanned over 50 years. Rohrer realized early on that circuit simulation was crucial to IC design for progress in size reduction and complexity. Among his achievements was introducing a sequence of circuit simulation courses at the University of California, Berkeley, that evolved into the SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) tool, now considered the industry standard for IC design simulation. At Carnegie Mellon University, Rohrer introduced the Asymptotic Waveform Evaluation (AWE) algorithm, which enabled highly efficient timing simulations of ICs containing large numbers of parasitic elements.

“The appointment of Ron Rohrer into TAMEST will increase the visibility of Lyle’s outstanding faculty members,” said Marc P. Christensen, dean of the Lyle School of Engineering.

“Through TAMEST, Rohrer will share his vast knowledge and inspire additional collaborative research relationships with other outstanding Texas professors and universities. This will elevate SMU and the state as a leading center of scholarship and innovation,” Christensen said.

Once an SMU electrical engineering professor back in the late 70’s, Rohrer rejoined the Lyle School as a faculty member in 2017. He is professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon and Rohrer’s career has included roles in academia, industrial management, venture capital, and start-up companies.

“I’ve stayed close to industry to be a practicing engineer and close to academia to conduct deeper research on hard problems,” said Rohrer.

According to Rohrer, one pressing problem is analog integrated circuit design automation, also the name of the project-based research course he’s currently teaching.

“In the analog domain, it’s hard to design a 20-transistor circuit. My goal is to make analog integrated circuit design more accessible to students and industry, especially for our local corporate partners,” he said. “I want to get the ball rolling so younger engineers can keep it moving toward a complete solution.”

Along with his membership in TAMEST and the National Academy of Engineering, Rohrer is an IEEE Life Fellow. His professional service includes several other prominent positions with IEEE, AIEE and U.S. government committees. He is the author and co-author of five textbooks and more than 100 technical papers as well as the holder of six patents. Rohrer has received 11 major awards, including the IEEE Education Medal and the NEC C&C Prize.

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SMU engineering team to lead DARPA-funded research into holographic imaging of hidden objects

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency seeks technology for soldiers to “see” around corners, behind walls

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Researchers from SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering will lead a multi-university team funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to build a theoretical framework for creating a computer-generated image of an object hidden from sight around a corner or behind a wall.

The core of the proposal is to develop a computer algorithm to unscramble the light that bounces off irregular surfaces to create a holographic image of hidden objects.

“This will allow us to build a 3-D representation – a hologram – of something that is out of view,” said Marc Christensen, dean of the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering at SMU and principal investigator for the project.

“Your eyes can’t do that,” Christensen said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t do that.”

The DARPA award is for a four-year project with anticipated total funding of $4.87 million. SMU Lyle has been awarded $2.2 million for the first two years of what DARPA calls the “REVEAL” project, with the expectation that phase II funding of another $2.67 million will awarded by 2018. SMU is the lead university for the research and is collaborating with engineers from Rice, Northwestern, and Harvard.

Co-investigators for the SMU team are Duncan MacFarlane, Bobby B. Lyle Centennial Chair in Engineering Entrepreneurship and professor of electrical engineering; and Prasanna Rangarajan, a research assistant professor who directs the Lyle School’s Photonics Architecture Lab.

DARPA’s mission, which dates back to reaction against the Soviet Union’s launch of SPUTNIK in 1957, is to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.

In seeking proposals for its “REVEAL” program, DARPA officials noted that conventional optical imaging systems today largely limit themselves to the measurement of light intensity, providing two-dimensional renderings of three-dimensional scenes and ignoring significant amounts of additional information that may be carried by captured light. SMU’s Christensen, an expert in photonics, explains the challenge like this:

“Light bounces off the smooth surface of a mirror at the same angle at which it hits the mirror, which is what allows the human eye to “see” a recognizable image of the event – a reflection,” Christensen said. “But light bouncing off the irregular surface of a wall or other non–reflective surface is scattered, which the human eye cannot image into anything intelligible.

“So the question becomes whether a computer can manipulate and process the light reflecting off a wall – unscrambling it to form a recognizable image – like light reflecting off a mirror,” Christensen explained. “Can a computer interpret the light bouncing around in ways that our eyes cannot?”

In an effort to tackle the problem, the proposed research effort will extend the light transport models currently employed in the computer graphics and vision communities based on radiance propagation to simultaneously accommodate the finite speed of light and the wave nature of light. For example, light travels at different speeds through different media (air, water, glass, etc.) and light waves within the visible spectrum scatter at different rates depending on color.
The Goal for the DARPA program is to develop a fundamental science for indirect imaging in scattering environments. This will lead to systems which can “see” around corners and behind obstructions at distances ranging from meters to kilometers.

People have been using imaging systems to gain knowledge of distant or microscopic objects for centuries, Christensen notes. But the last decade has witnessed a number of advancements that prepare engineers for the revolution that DARPA is seeking.

“For example, the speed and sophistication of signal processing (the process of converting analog transmissions into digital signals) has reached the point where we can accomplish really intensive computational tasks on handheld devices,” Christensen said. “What that means is that whatever solutions we design should be easily transportable into the battlefield.”

The SMU-led DARPA project is working under the acronym OMNISCIENT – “Obtaining Multipath & Non-line-of-sight Information by Sensing Coherence & Intensity with Emerging Novel Techniques.”

The team unites leading researchers in the fields of computational imaging, computer vision, signal processing, information theory and computer graphics. Guiding the Rice University component of the research are Ashok Veeraraghavan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Richard Baraniuk, Victor E, Cameron Professor; leading the Northwestern component is Oliver Cossairt, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and head of the university’s Computational Photography Lab; and the Harvard research is led by Todd Zickler, professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Wolfgang Heindcrich, director of the Visual Computing Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, will be a consultant to the SMU Team.
— Kim Cobb

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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Wired: Lasers Power Pentagon’s Next-Gen Artificial Limbs

Reporter Katie Drummond with Wired magazine has covered the research of SMU engineers Marc Christensen and Volkan Otugen who are working as part of a consortium with industry and other universities to develop technology that will someday help amputees have “feeling” in their artificial limbs.

The research is funded through a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and industry for a center led by SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. The goal is to develop revolutionary technology for advanced prosthetic limbs that will help amputees returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat.

Wired’s coverage published Nov. 3 in Drummond’s “Danger Room” column.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Katie Drummond
Wired

The Pentagon’s already got brain-controlled prosthetics, and they are a major improvement over old-school artificial limbs. The devices are far from perfect, however. They rely on metal implants, which aren’t compatible with the body’s tissues, and they can only transmit a few signals at a time — turning what should be a simple movement into a Herculean task.

Now, Darpa-funded researchers are convinced they’ve found a way to make prosthetics truly life-like: laser beams.

A team led by experts at Southern Methodist University is making swift progress towards prosthetic devices that rely on fiber-optics, and would offer a wearer the kind of seamless movement and sensation experienced with a flesh-and-blood limb.

“Already, we’re tantalizingly close,” Dr. Marc Christensen, the program’s leader, tells Danger Room. “We haven’t seen anything that’s been a deal-breaker yet.”

It all started in 2005, when researchers at Vanderbilt realized they could trigger a nerve using infrared light. The finding catalyzed a handful of research projects investigating the prospect of laser-powered prostheses, and Darpa last year doled out $5.6 million for the creation of the Neurophotonics Research Center, led by SMU, for the development of prosthetic devices powered by infrared lasers.

Read the full story.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Mind & Brain Researcher news SMU In The News Technology

KERA: Engineering Hope: Research To Aid Injured Troops

Reporter B.J. Austin with Dallas area Public Radio station KERA has interviewed SMU engineers Marc Christensen and Volkan Otugen who are working as part of a consortium with industry and other universities to develop technology that will someday help amputees have “feeling” in their artificial limbs.

The research is funded through a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and industry for a center led by SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. The goal is to develop revolutionary technology for advanced prosthetic limbs that will help amputees returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat.

KERA’s coverage aired Oct. 10 as part of a larger series on “Engineering Hope: Groundbreaking Research That Could Change Our Lives..”

Read the full story and watch the video.

EXCERPT:

KERA News
This week, KERA 90.1 is airing a series of reports: “Engineering Hope: Groundbreaking Research That Could Change Our Lives.” In today’s report KERA’s BJ Austin visits a lab where researchers from North Texas universities are developing the next generation of prosthetic limbs for injured soldiers. It’s cutting-edge research that could allow amputees to move more naturally and sense feeling with their artificial limbs.

In a busy Starbucks, two things make 28 year old Clint Barkley stand out in the crowd: his clean cut good looks and his walk.

Barkley: We were just south of Fallujah in 2005. We ran over a land mine. I lost my left leg. Our gunner lost both of his feet below his knee.

The former Marine from Bedford walks unevenly, slightly stiff, but full of confidence. He wears a ten pound, titanium leg. It attaches mid-thigh and has a computerized knee.

Barkley: It reads your body weight, how you’re moving and it reacts accordingly. I put my heel down then as I go and put all the pressure in my toe it knows I’m taking a step so it releases and kicks the foot back forward for me.

But what it doesn’t do is allow a smooth, natural gait. And the leg does not allow him to feel the gravel in a driveway or the heat of an asphalt parking lot in August. But that could be in his future.

A consortium of scientists and engineers in North Texas and elsewhere are working on a way for the brain, the body’s nerve impulses and an artificial limb to “talk” to each other. That could allow an amputee to “think” about moving an artificial arm or leg and the limb would respond immediately and more naturally. Conversely, the artificial limb would talk to the brain, giving it sensory input, thereby allowing the amputee to “feel.” The research is being led by Marc Christensen, Professor of Engineering Innovation at Southern Methodist University. But, part of the project is taking place in a noisy, unassuming lab at the University of North Texas. That’s where Christensen talked about the research, being funded initially by a 5.5 million dollar grant from the Department of Defense.

Read the full story and watch the video.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Health & Medicine Mind & Brain Researcher news SMU In The News Technology

Popular Science: A New Interface For Bionic Limbs

Light bridges the communication gap between man and machine

The monthly science magazine Popular Science covered the research of SMU engineers Marc Christensen and Volkan Otugen who are working to develop technology that will someday help amputees have “feeling” in their artificial limbs.

The research is funded through a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and industry for a center led by SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. The goal is to develop revolutionary technology for advanced prosthetic limbs that will help amputees returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat.

Popular Science’s coverage is in the March issue: “Talk to the hand: A new interface for bionic limbs.”

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Morgen Peck
Popular Science

The Six Million Dollar Man’s robotic arm worked as seamlessly as his natural one. But in the real world, robotic limbs have limited motions and the user can’t feel what he or she is “touching.” a new approach using optical fibers implanted around nerves could transmit more data and let prosthetics speak to the brain.

Previously, scientists surgically connected electrodes to the nervous system, but they seemed to harm the body’s tissues, making the implant fail within months. In 2005, scientists discovered that they could stimulate a neuron to send a message by shining infrared light on it. Last September, DARPA, the Pentagon’s R&D branch, awarded $4 million to a project led by Southern Methodist University engineers to attempt to connect nerves to artificial limbs using fiber optics.

The team suspects that flexible glass or polymer fiber optics will be more flesh-friendly than rigid electrodes. In addition, optical fibers transmit several signals at once, carrying 10 times as much data as their electrical counterparts. “Our goal is to do for neural interfaces what fiber optics did for the telecom industry,” says electrical engineer Marc Christensen, who is leading the SMU group. Transmitting more information faster should give bionic limbs more lifelike movements.

Talk to the hand: A new interface for bionic limbs.

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2010 a year of advances for SMU scientific researchers at the vanguard of those helping civilization

From picking apart atomic particles at Switzerland’s CERN, to unraveling the mysterious past, to delving into the human psyche, SMU researchers are in the vanguard of those helping civilization understand more and live better.

With both public and private funding — and the assistance of their students — they are tackling such scientific and social problems as brain diseases, immigration, diabetes, evolution, volcanoes, panic disorders, childhood obesity, cancer, radiation, nuclear test monitoring, dark matter, the effects of drilling in the Barnett Shale, and the architecture of the universe.

The sun never sets on SMU research
Besides working in campus labs and within the Dallas-area community, SMU scientists conduct research throughout the world, including at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and in Angola, the Canary Islands, Mongolia, Kenya, Italy, China, the Congo Basin, Ethiopia, Mexico, the Northern Mariana Islands and South Korea.

“Research at SMU is exciting and expanding,” says Associate Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies James E. Quick, a professor in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. “Our projects cover a wide range of problems in basic and applied research, from the search for the Higgs particle at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN to the search for new approaches to treat serious diseases. The University looks forward to creating increasing opportunities for undergraduates to become involved as research expands at SMU.”

Funding from public and private sources
In 2009-10, SMU received $25.6 million in external funding for research, up from $16.5 million the previous year.

“Research is a business that cannot be grown without investment,” Quick says. “Funding that builds the research enterprise is an investment that will go on giving by enabling the University to attract more federal grants in future years.”

The funding came from public and private sources, including the National Science Foundation; the National Institutes of Health; the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Energy; the U.S. Geological Survey; Google.org; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Texas’ own Hogg Foundation for Mental Health; and the Texas Instruments Foundation.

Worldwide, the news media are covering SMU research. See some of the coverage. Browse a sample of the research:

CERN and the origin of our universe
cern_atlas-thumb.jpgLed by Physics Professor Ryszard Stroynowski, SMU physics researchers belong to the global consortium of scientists investigating the origins of our universe by monitoring high-speed sub-atomic particle collisions at CERN, the world’s largest physics experiment.

Compounds to fight neurodegenerative diseases
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Synthetic organic chemist and Chemistry Professor Edward Biehl leads a team developing organic compounds for possible treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s. Preliminary investigation of one compound found it was extremely potent as a strong, nontoxic neuroprotector in mice.

Hunting dark matter
Dark%20matterthumb.jpgAssistant Professor of Physics Jodi Cooley belongs to a high-profile international team of experimental particle physicists searching for elusive dark matter — believed to constitute the bulk of the matter in the universe — at an abandoned underground mine in Minnesota, and soon at an even deeper mine in Canada.

Robotic arms for injured war vets
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Electrical Engineering Chairman and Professor Marc Christensen is director of a new $5.6 million center funded by the Department of Defense and industry. The center will develop for war veteran amputees a high-tech robotic arm with fiber-optic connectivity to the brain capable of “feeling” sensations.

Green energy from the Earth’s inner heat
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The SMU Geothermal Laboratory, under Earth Sciences Professor David Blackwell, has identified and mapped U.S. geothermal resources capable of supplying a green source of commercial power generation, including resources that were much larger than expected under coal-rich West Virginia.

Exercise can be magic drug for depression and anxiety
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Psychologist Jasper Smits, director of the Anxiety Research and Treatment Program at SMU, says exercise can help many people with depression and anxiety disorders and should be more widely prescribed by mental health care providers.

The traditional treatments of cognitive behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy don’t reach everyone who needs them, says Smits, an associate professor of psychology.

Virtual reality “dates” to prevent victimization
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SMU psychologists Ernest Jouriles, Renee McDonald and Lorelei Simpson have partnered with SMU Guildhall in developing an interactive video gaming environment where women on virtual-reality dates can learn and practice assertiveness skills to prevent sexual victimization.

With assertive resistance training, young women have reduced how often they are sexually victimized, the psychologists say.

Controlled drug delivery agents for diabetes
brent-sumerlin.thumb.jpgAssociate Chemistry Professor Brent Sumerlin leads a team of SMU chemistry researchers — including postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students — who fuse the fields of polymer, organic and biochemistries to develop novel materials with composite properties. Their research includes developing nano-scale polymer particles to deliver insulin to diabetics.

Sumerlin, associate professor of chemistry, was named a 2010-2012 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, which carries a $50,000 national award to support his research.

Human speed
Usain_Bolt_Berlin%2Csmall.jpgAn expert on the locomotion of humans and other terrestrial animals, Associate Professor of Applied Physiology and Biomechanics Peter Weyand has analyzed the biomechanics of world-class athletes Usain Bolt and Oscar Pistorius. His research targets the relationships between muscle function, metabolic energy expenditure, whole body mechanics and performance.

Weyand’s research also looks at why smaller people tire faster. Finding that they have to take more steps to cover the same distance or travel at the same speed, he and other scientists derived an equation that can be used to calculate the energetic cost of walking.

Pacific Ring of Fire volcano monitoring
E_crater1%20thumb.jpgAn SMU team of earth scientists led by Professor and Research Dean James Quick works with the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire near Guam on the Northern Mariana Islands. Their research will help predict and anticipate hazards to the islands, the U.S. military and commercial jets.

The two-year, $250,000 project will use infrasound — in addition to more conventional seismic monitoring — to “listen” for signs a volcano is about to blow.

Reducing anxiety and asthma
Mueret%20thumb.jpgA system of monitoring breathing to reduce CO2 intake is proving useful for reducing the pain of chronic asthma and panic disorder in separate studies by Associate Psychology Professor Thomas Ritz and Assistant Psychology Professor Alicia Meuret.

The two have developed the four-week program to teach asthmatics and those with panic disorder how to better control their condition by changing the way they breathe.

Breast Cancer community engagement
breast%20cancer%20100x80.jpgAssistant Psychology Professor Georita Friersen is working with African-American and Hispanic women in Dallas to address the quality-of-life issues they face surrounding health care, particularly during diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.

Friersen also examines health disparities regarding prevention and treatment of chronic diseases among medically underserved women and men.

Paleoclimate in humans’ first environment
Cenozoic%20Africa%20150x120%2C%2072dpi.jpgPaleobotanist and Associate Earth Sciences Professor Bonnie Jacobs researches ancient Africa’s vegetation to better understand the environmental and ecological context in which our ancient human ancestors and other mammals evolved.

Jacobs is part of an international team of researchers who combine independent lines of evidence from various fossil and geochemical sources to reconstruct the prehistoric climate, landscape and ecosystems of Ethiopia in particular. She also identifies and prepares flora fossil discoveries for Ethiopia’s national museum.

Ice Age humans
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Anthropology Professor David Meltzer explores the western Rockies of Colorado to understand the prehistoric Folsom hunters who adapted to high-elevation environments during the Ice Age.

Meltzer, a world-recognized expert on paleoIndians and early human migration from eastern continents to North America, was inducted into the National Academy of Scientists in 2009.

Understanding evolution
Cane%20rate%2C%20Uganda%2C%2020%20mya%20400x300.jpgThe research of paleontologist Alisa WInkler focuses on the systematics, paleobiogeography and paleoecology of fossil mammals, in particular rodents and rabbits.

Her study of prehistoric rodents in East Africa and Texas, such as the portion of jaw fossil pictured, is helping shed more light on human evolution.

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CBS 11 DFW: Doctors using fiber optics for prosthetic limbs

CBS Channel 11 in Dallas-Fort Worth covered the research of SMU engineers Marc Christensen and Volkan Otugen who are working to develop technology that will someday help amputees have “feeling” in their artificial limbs.

The research is funded through a $5.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and industry for a center led by SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. The goal is to develop revolutionary technology for advanced prosthetic limbs that will help amputees returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat.

CBS Channel 11’s coverage aired Nov. 30: “Doctors Using Fiber Optics For Prosthetic Limbs.”

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Keith Garvin
CBSDFW.COM

Imagine not being able to pick up a drink, a pen, or even hold a spouse’s hand. For thousands of North Texans living as amputees, that is reality. But, some local engineers are teaming up with medical science to help transform that reality and change lives.

Bernie Diamond of Fort Worth is the picture of health. The former fitness model turned hairdresser was on top of his game. But, three years ago, everything changed in a split second when he was randomly shot while standing outside a home in Dallas.

“I got shot at such a perfect angle that it shot through the wrist and blew out the entire back of my hand,” Diamond said.

After many surgeries and attempts to rehabilitate his left hand, Diamond and his doctors made the decision to amputate his hand just above the wrist.

“I remember I was crying the entire time saying please don’t take my hand, please don’t take my hand,” Diamond said.

He had to learn to function with a prosthetic replacement, which doesn’t allow for much movement. But, that’s what researchers at Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas are trying to change.

“Today we have very sophisticated robotic arms,” explained Marc Christensen, chair of the electrical engineering department at SMU. “What we’re lacking is a good interface to control them.”

Dr. Gunter Gross at UNT, and Doctors Christensen and Volkan Otugen at SMU are working to create a system of fiber-optic wires and sensors that can replace the vast network of nerves inside a limb.

“It’s a link to send and receive information between the brain and the limb,” explained Dr. Otugen, chair of the mechanical engineering department at SMU.

Read the full story.

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New Scientist: Robot limbs to plug into the brain with light

A new $5.6 million center funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and industry is led by SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering to develop revolutionary technology for advanced prosthetic limbs that will help amputees returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat.

Journalist David Hambling in New Scientist magazine reported on the technology and the research center in the Oct. 17 article “Robot limbs to plug into the brain with light.”

The center is led by Marc Christensen, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

Read the full story.

Excerpt:

By David Hambling
New Scientist
Imagine a bionic arm that plugs directly into the nervous system, so that the brain can control its motion, and the owner can feel pressure and heat through their robotic hand. This prospect has come a step closer with the development of photonic sensors that could improve connections between nerves and prosthetic limbs.

Existing neural interfaces are electronic, using metal components that may be rejected by the body. Now Marc Christensen at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and colleagues are building sensors to pick up nerve signals using light instead. They employ optical fibres and polymers that are less likely than metal to trigger an immune response, and which will not corrode.

The sensors are currently in the prototype stage and too big to put in the body, but smaller versions should work in biological tissue, according to the team.

Whisper light
The sensors are based on spherical shells of a polymer that changes shape in an electric field. The shells are coupled with an optical fibre, which sends a beam of light travelling around inside them.

The way that the light travels around the inside of the sphere is called a “whispering gallery mode”, named after the Whispering Gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, where sound travels further than usual because it reflects along a concave wall.

The idea is that the electric field associated with a nerve impulse could affect the shape of the sphere, which will in turn change the resonance of the light on the inside of the shell; the nerve effectively becomes part of a photonic circuit. In theory, the change in resonance of the light travelling through the optical fibre could tell a robotic arm that the brain wants to move a finger, for instance.

Signals could be carried in the other direction by shining infrared light directly onto a nerve — this is known to stimulate nerves — guided by a reflector at the tip of the optical fibre.

Read the full story.

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Dallas Observer: SMU, DOD Partner Again, This Time on Prosthetics That Feel

The Dallas Observer on its Unfair Park blog took note of the SMU-led Neurophotonics Research Center being funded by the Department of Defense and industry with a $5.6 million grant.

In the Sept. 13 entry, Journalist Robert Wilonsky explained details of the project to Observer readers and quoted Marc Christensen, electrical engineering chair in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering.

“Enhancing human performance with modern digital technologies is one of the great frontiers in engineering. Providing this kind of port to the nervous system will enable not only realistic prosthetic limbs, but also can be applied to treat spinal cord injuries and an array of neurological disorders,” Christensen is quoted.

EXCERPT:
By Robert Wilonsky
SMU and the Department of Defense are already partners on that paper-thin camera straight outta 1984 by way of Minority Report. Now the Hilltop sends word of its latest DOD partnership — a $5.6-mil Neurophotonics Research Center that’ll be run by Marc Christensen, electrical engineering chair in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. Its charge: to develop prosthetic limbs using fiber optics that actually feel things like pressure and temperature. Says SMU: “Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees.”

Read the full story.

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SMU leads $5.6M research center for fiber optic interface to link robotic limbs, human brain

DOD, industry fund $5.6 million SMU-led research center; Lyle School technology drives development of advanced prosthetics

Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees with the establishment of a multimillion-dollar research center led by SMU engineers.

Funded by a Department of Defense initiative dedicated to audacious challenges and intense time schedules, the Neurophotonics Research Center will develop two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves.

This connection will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat.

Successful completion of the fiber optic link will allow for sending signals seamlessly back and forth between the brain and artificial limbs, allowing amputees revolutionary freedom of movement and agility.

Potential to patch injured spinal cord

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Partners in the Neurophotonics Research Center also envision man-to-machine applications that extend far beyond prosthetics, leading to medical breakthroughs like brain implants for the control of tremors, neuro-modulators for chronic pain management and implants for patients with spinal cord injuries.

The researchers believe their new technologies can ultimately provide the solution to the kind of injury that left actor Christopher Reeve paralyzed after a horse riding accident. “This technology has the potential to patch the spinal cord above and below a spinal injury,” said Marc Christensen, center director and electrical engineering chair in SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. “Someday, we will get there.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding the $5.6 million center with industry partners as part of its Centers in Integrated Photonics Engineering Research (CIPhER) project, which aims to dramatically improve the lives of the large numbers of military amputees returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Currently available prosthetic devices commonly rely on cables to connect them to other parts of the body for operation — for example, requiring an amputee to clench a healthy muscle in the chest to manipulate a prosthetic hand. The movement is typically deliberate, cumbersome, and far from lifelike.

A link compatible with living tissue
The goal of the Neurophotonics Research Center is to develop a link compatible with living tissue that will connect powerful computer technologies to the human nervous system through hundreds or even thousands of sensors embedded in a single fiber.

Unlike experimental electronic nerve interfaces made of metal, fiber optic technology would not be rejected or destroyed by the body’s immune system.

“Enhancing human performance with modern digital technologies is one of the great frontiers in engineering,” said Christensen. “Providing this kind of port to the nervous system will enable not only realistic prosthetic limbs, but also can be applied to treat spinal cord injuries and an array of neurological disorders.”

The center brings together researchers from SMU, Vanderbilt University, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas.

The Neurophotonics Research Center’s industrial partners include Lockheed Martin (Aculight), Plexon, Texas Instruments, National Instruments and MRRA.

Integrated system at cellular level
Together, this group of university and industry researchers will develop and demonstrate new increasingly sophisticated two-way communication connections to the nervous system.

Every movement or sensation a human being is capable of has a nerve signal at its root. “The reason we feel heat is because a nerve is stimulated, telling the brain there’s heat there,” Christensen said.

The center formed around a challenge from the industrial partners to build a fiber optic sensor scaled for individual nerve signals: “Team members have been developing the individual pieces of the solution over the past few years, but with this new federal funding we are able to push the technology forward into an integrated system that works at the cellular level,” Christensen said.

The research builds on partner universities’ recent advances in light stimulation of individual nerve cells and new, extraordinarily sensitive optical sensors being developed at SMU. Volkan Otugen, SMU site director for the center and Lyle School mechanical engineering chair, has pioneered research on tiny spherical devices that sense the smallest of signals utilizing a concept known as “whispering gallery modes.” A whispering gallery is an enclosed circular or elliptical area, like that found beneath an architectural dome, in which whispers can be heard clearly on the other side of the space.

Ultimate combination for two-way interface
The ultimate combination of advanced optical nerve stimulation and nerve-sensing technologies will create a complete, two-way interface that does not currently exist. “It will revolutionize the field of brain interfaces,” Christensen said.

“Science fiction writers have long imagined the day when the understanding and intuition of the human brain could be enhanced by the lightning speed of computing technologies,” said Geoffrey Orsak, dean of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering. “With this remarkable research initiative, we are truly beginning a journey into the future that will provide immeasurable benefits to humanity.”

A private university located in the heart of Dallas, SMU is building on the vision of its founders, who in 1911 imagined a distinguished center for learning emerging from the spirit of the city. Today, nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach afforded by the quality of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools. — Kimberly Cobb

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with Marc Christensen or to book a live or taped interview in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

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Technology

DOD funds tiny cave camera, iris recognition technology for military, homeland security

Subiimager.jpgResearchers are expanding new miniature camera technology for military and security uses so soldiers can track combatants in dark caves or urban alleys, and security officials can unobtrusively identify a subject from an iris scan.

The two new surveillance applications both build on “Panoptes,” a platform technology developed under a project led by Marc Christensen at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and funded by the Department of Defense.

Panoptes is a compact, lightweight, high-resolution smart camera that is named for the Greek mythological character Argos Panoptes, the giant sentry with a hundred eyes.

DOD is funding development of the technology’s first two extension applications with a $1.6 million grant to SMU.

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Wired: DARPA’s Beady-Eyed Camera Spots the ‘Non-Cooperative’

Both the tiny cave camera and the iris recognition application will aid the military, border patrol, intelligence officials and airport security, according to Christensen and Delores Etter, a leading researcher in biometric identification.

Both are electrical engineers in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering. The new applications may be ready for fielded demonstrations as soon as late 2011, said Christensen.

The Panoptes imaging system has been field-tested in tactical environment simulations by defense contractor Northrop Grumman and is currently in an independent test with Draper Laboratory.

“The Panoptes technology is sufficiently mature that it can now leave our lab, and we’re finding lots of applications for it,” said Christensen, an expert in computational imaging and optical interconnections. “This new money will allow us to explore Panoptes’ use for non-cooperative iris recognition systems for Homeland Security and other defense applications. And it will allow us to enhance the camera system to make it capable of active illumination so it can travel into dark places — like caves and urban areas.”

The new grant brings total DOD funding of Panoptes — short for “Processing Arrays of Nyquist-limited Observations to Produce a Thin Electro-optic Sensor” — to $5.5 million. The new applications have been dubbed AIM-CAMS, for “Active Illumination with Micro-mirror-arrays for Computational Adaptive Multi-resolution Sensing,” and Smart-Iris, for “SMU’s Multi-resolution Adaptive Roving Task-specific Iris Recognition Imaging System.”

Hi-rez “eyes” in caves, urban alleys

helmetcamera.jpgPanoptes initially was designed for military aerial drones and combat helmet cameras for use in daylight environments. The technology produces sharp, clear images without the size and weight of a conventional camera system because it doesn’t rely on a large, bulky, curved lens for high-resolution images.

Instead, arrays of agile and precisely controlled microelectromechanical system (MEMS) mirrors are integrated with low-resolution sub-imagers on a silicon base for the purpose of sampling a wide field of view. The analog steerable MEMS mirrors adaptively redirect plexiglas sub-imagers to zoom in on regions of interest. The captured images are stored in an onboard computer and restored to high-resolution by an information theory-based super-resolution algorithm.

The sub-imagers are tiny off-axis-shaped paraboloids, fabricated using injection molding. At 8 millimeters by 5.7 millimeters by 4 millimeters, the sub-imagers have an effective focal length of 4 millimeters and are tiny enough to fit on the surface of a small coin.

The honeycomb-shaped micro mirror array comprises 61 hexagonal mirrors, each with three actuators to mechanically move and control the mirrors. The usable circular aperture, the opening through which light travels, is 3.9 millimeters in diameter. The end result — a digitally restored image — while not super-resolution, approaches optical limit, the researchers say.

The flat sub-imagers can be tiled unobtrusively almost anywhere, from the underside of a small drone to the outside of a soldier’s helmet to the walls of a hallway.

The Panoptes architecture is unique in its ability to adapt its field of view to steer to a region of interest, capturing only images of value, Christensen said. That preserves computing power by eliminating uniform allocation of imaging resources, which is wasteful, he said.

Smart-Iris narrows from wide field-of-view to narrow field-of-view

To develop the biometric Smart-Iris, the adaptive resolution of Panoptes will be paired with iris recognition technology.

“It’s very challenging to get the resolution with a wide field-of-view camera, but with a zoom camera, it’s hard to find the iris because it’s like looking through a soda straw,” Christensen said.

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Every iris is unique

Iris recognition — currently used worldwide by airports, prisons, laboratories, fitness clubs, hotels and other institutions — is the most accurate biometric available because no two irises are alike, said Etter, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense who leads SMU’s Biometrics Engineering Research Group. The technology is challenged, however, by interference when the iris is being scanned, she said. Problems can include glare, eyelashes, eyelids or dim lighting.

With Panoptes, the camera can start with a wide field-of-view at low resolution, find a face, then narrow to the area of interest — the iris. At the same time, Smart-Iris will extend the range of iris acquisition. Instead of one person cooperatively standing motionless with their eye pressed to a scanner, Smart-Iris will make it possible for people to pass through a standard doorway, each one getting their iris scanned — without so much as even pausing — by equipment mounted on walls or door frames. At the same time, the camera would maintain high resolution and more than 150 pixels across the iris.

Easier Smart-Iris scan is unobtrusive, but accurate

That could benefit the Department of Homeland Security. More than 600 million people pass through security to fly aboard commercial airlines each year, according to the agency. Homeland Security relies on the latest technology to monitor more than 700 security checkpoints and 7,000 baggage screening areas.

“Our goal is to develop an iris recognition system that is unobtrusive and accurate. We want to ensure that the right people have access, and that potential intruders are identified, all without impacting flow in high-traffic areas,” said Etter, who directs the Lyle School’s Caruth Institute for Engineering Education.

Into caves and dark alleys

To develop AIM-CAMS, Panoptes is being paired with new off-the-shelf pocket projector technology known as Pico. Pico projectors, often compared in size to a candy bar, make it possible to project digital pictures taken by cell phones and other portable devices onto any wall for large-format viewing.

Combining Pico with Panoptes will allow the low-resolution camera to be used in dark places, such as caves and urban alleys, providing troops with situational awareness, said Christensen, who is chair of the SMU Department of Electrical Engineering and an associate professor.

SMU is collaborating on the research with Santa Clara University in California, Northrop Grumman and Draper Laboratory. Funding came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of Naval Research and Army Research Laboratory.

Watch a news video about the Panoptes research

Related links:
DOD adds $2 million to SMU’s camera research
Marc Christensen
SMU Profile: Marc Christensen
Conference paper on Panoptes
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

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Will high-density PICs be the next big thing?

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Gary Evans in SMU’s Photonics Lab.

Lasers have the potential to improve and revolutionize human lives in many ways, from consumer electronics and communications to medical equipment and homeland security. Helping unlock the barriers to these advancements is the research of SMU Electrical Engineering Professor Gary Evans.

Evans has been recognized by his peers for his contributions to the development, design and fabrication of semiconductor lasers, microscopic manufactured devices that can amplify subatomic light particles called photons.

This technology, in turn, can lead to applications that transmit data, energy, pictures or sound.

The field of photonics already has many claims to fame: Laser pulses deliver information through glass fibers to create the high-speed Internet; certain wavelengths of laser light are used in cancer therapy; lasers read CDs and DVDs; and at industrial plants, lasers cut materials with precision.

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But future development of high-power applications requires research advancements of the kind Evans is tackling in his laboratory: He is looking for a way to fit billions of lasers and other optical components atop a microscopic chip.

The challenge is similar to the one faced in the late 1950s by the engineers who developed the electronic integrated circuit. The revolutionary high-density electronic integrated circuit paved the way for powerful hand-held calculators, laptop computers and myriad microelectronic devices and technology that have transformed the world.

Evans and other researchers believe photonic integrated circuits (PICs) may have that same vast potential, but there are technical problems to resolve. One key to manufacturing high-density PICs, which can hold billions of optical devices, is an “isolator.” An isolator would allow photons to flow unrestricted in the forward direction, but would prevent any reflected light from traveling backward. Without an isolator, unavoidable reflections would cause instabilities and chaos in the PIC.

“An isolator allows integration of large numbers of lasers and other optical components to produce stable, robust photonic circuits,” Evans says. Since 1994 he and Jacob Hammer, a retired colleague from RCA Labs, have been working along with graduate students to develop an isolator.

“We have a good understanding of the theory and we realize what problems need to be solved to make an integrated isolator in a semiconductor,” Evans says. “But more theory needs to be done to understand the materials that need to be developed. The materials just don’t exist yet.”

He is seeking federal funding to continue collaborations with Hammer, the University of California, Santa Barbara and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to develop those materials.

Since 2001 the team has received $250,000 in federal funding for isolator research. Some funding for Evans’ research also has been awarded to Photodigm Inc., a company he co-founded. Photodigm specializes in photonics technology for communications, digital imaging, defense and medical device applications. The Richardson-based company has contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, among others.

Evans joined SMU in 1992, the year he also received one of electrical engineering’s top honors: election as a Fellow of IEEE, the technology industry’s professional association. The association cited Evans for contributions he has made to the industry’s development, fabrication and understanding of semiconductor lasers.

Over the years, Evans’ research has been conducted in conjunction with others, including the larger SMU photonics team: Jerome Butler, University Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering; Jay Kirk, SMU electrical engineering laboratory manager and a co-founder of Photodigm; and Marc Christensen, chair and associate professor of the Electrical Engineering Department and a member of Photodigm’s technical advisory board. — Margaret Allen

Related links:
Gary Evans
Jerome Butler
Jay Kirk
Marc Christensen
SMU Photonics Group
The Daily Campus: Shade Tree Engineering
SMU’s Electrical Engineering research
Department of Electrical Engineering
Photodigm
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

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Researcher news Technology

The 33 news: SMU developing micro camera for front-line soldiers

Southern Methodist University researchers are taking a different approach to producing photo and video images for military surveillance cameras outfitted on unmanned aerial vehicles and helmets. Walt Maciborski of The 33 news broadcast in Dallas reported July 8 on research in the lab of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Marc Christensen.

Watch the video

Excerpt:

By Walt Maciborski
KDAF: The 33
DALLAS — Cutting edge micro cameras are being developed in a basement lab at Southern Methodist University. The project is code-named Panoptes, more on its name later.

Associate Professor Marc Christensen says his undergraduate and graduate researchers at SMU’s Photonic Architectures Lab are about to take a giant leap into the future of photography.

“What we’re working on here is trying to develop the next generation of cameras,” Christensen says.

Christensen’s team is creating video and still cameras that are as thin as about two credit cards, covered with tiny mirrored lenses.

“The original program was driven by the department of defense, (because) they have a need to have tactical imagery, and they don’t want to only have it on platforms that are as large as a Predator UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), ” Christensen says. “They would like to fit this camera on something the size of a model airplane or something that could fit in the palm of your hand.”

Read the full story.

Related links:
SMU Profile: Marc Christensen
Wired: Darpa’s smart, flat camera is packed with beady eyes
Unfair Park: On the hilltop, SMU prof creating teensy-weensy military camera
Defense News: Sharper image for military surveillance
Hi-tech lens sharpens military surveillance
Marc Christensen
Conference paper on Panoptes
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

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Researcher news Technology

Wired: DARPA’s smart, flat camera packed with beady eyes

Southern Methodist University researchers are taking a different approach to producing photo and video images for military surveillance cameras outfitted on unmanned aerial vehicles and helmets. David Hambling of Wired magazine reported July 1 on research in the lab of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Marc Christensen.

Christensen, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, has built a nationally recognized research group in photonics and computational imaging. His work with imaging sensors and micro-mirror arrays has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, among others. In 2007 he received the DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Excerpt:

By David Hambling
Wired.com
Troops and unmanned aircraft could be the first to benefit from a new smart, ultra-slim camera technology which combines the images from many low-resolution sensors to create a high-resolution picture. Known as Panoptes, it promises lightweight, flat cameras with the power of a big lens in a device just five millimeters thick. It’s being developed by Professor Marc Christensen at Southern Methodist University, with funding from Darpa. Planned applications include sensors for miniature drones and helmet-cams for soldiers.

A key feature of the system is that it’s made up of a large number of tiny imagers. These are small, simple cameras, each directed independently by a MEMS-controlled micro-mirror. Because there is no large lens, Pantoptes can be made flat, unlike other cameras.

A central processor combines the images into a single picture, producing a higher resolution than the individual imagers. The intelligence is in the way that the system identifies areas of interest and concentrates the sub-imagers on the relevant part of the scene. Christensen gives the example of the Panoptes system looking at a building in a field.

“After a first frame or two was collected, the system could identify that certain areas, like the open field, had nothing of interest, whereas other areas, like the license plate of a car parked outside or peering in the windows, had details that were not sufficiently resolved,” he tells Danger Room. “In the next frame, subimagers that had been interrogating the field would be steered to aid in the imaging of the license plate and windows, thereby extracting the additional information.”

Read the full story.

Related links:
SMU Profile: Marc Christensen
Defense News: Sharper Image
Unfair Park: On the hilltop, SMU prof creating teensy-weensy military camera
Hi-tech lens sharpens military surveillance
Marc Christensen
Conference paper on Panoptes
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

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Researcher news Technology

Defense News: Sharper image for military surveillance

Southern Methodist University researchers are taking a different approach to producing photo and video images for military surveillance cameras outfitted on unmanned aerial vehicles and helmets. William Matthews of Defense News reported June 8 on research in the lab of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Marc Christensen.

Christensen, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, has built a nationally recognized research group in photonics and computational imaging. His work with imaging sensors and micro-mirror arrays has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, among others. In 2007 he received the DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Excerpt:

By William Matthews
Defense News
When the U.S. military gets into a fight, it wants to see everything that’s going on, so it relies on a plethora of optical sensors.

Cameras on UAVs are increasingly numerous. So are cameras on vehicles and cameras on soldiers’ helmets. And cameras on satellites have been around for a long time.

But traditional cameras have a drawback. They’re bulky and relatively heavy.

Read the full story.

Related links:
SMU Profile: Marc Christensen
Wired: Darpa’s smart, flat camera is packed with beady eyes
Unfair Park: On the hilltop, SMU prof creating teensy-weensy military camera
Hi-tech lens sharpens military surveillance
Marc Christensen
Conference paper on Panoptes
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

Categories
Technology

Hi-tech lens sharpens military surveillance

In Greek mythology, Argos Panoptes was a giant sentry with a hundred eyes. But in the lab of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Marc Christensen, Panoptes is a type of camera technology. The technology is being developed with funding from the U.S. military for surveillance by small aircraft at low altitudes.

helmetcamera.jpgThe research should eventually provide helmet-mounted surveillance equipment for soldiers on the ground. Lens performance tends to improve with size, which is why a small cell phone camera can’t produce a very good image.

But the Panoptes technology uses the power of a computer to combine overlapping images of dozens of tiny lenses — producing a clear picture without the size and weight of a large lens.

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Christensen, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering in SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, has built a nationally recognized research group in photonics and computational imaging.

His work with imaging sensors and micro-mirror arrays has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, among others. In 2007 he received the DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Christensen also leads a project with researchers from the University of Delaware, UT-Dallas and Sandia National Laboratory.

Related links:
Marc Christensen
SMU Profile: Marc Christensen
Conference paper on Panoptes
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

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Skeptics aside, “computing with light” will replace silicon chip

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Gary Evans

SMU Professor of Electrical Engineering Gary Evans recently received some good news: Journal reviewers said they thought his proposal for solving one of the most perplexing problems in the emerging field of integrated photonics sounded impossible.

“To me, that’s extremely promising when the reviewers don’t think it’s possible,” Evans said. “When that’s happened, it’s been fun showing the reviewers that the conventional wisdom is incorrect.”

Photonics is the science of processing or transmitting information using light. Fiber-optic systems — perhaps the field’s best known application — transform telephone conversations into laser-generated signals that travel through thin glass wires to machines that decode the signals at the other end.

A photon is a light quantum, the smallest measurable unit of light. Integrated photonics researchers seek to create circuits that use photons to do what electrons do in electric integrated semiconductor circuits.

Evans and Jerome Butler, university distinguished professor of electrical engineering, think they have hit on a solution to the problem of integrating an optical isolator with other components in a photonic circuit. In electric semiconductor circuits, diodes act as isolators by letting electrons flow in only one direction.

“Isolation is crucial when you put about 1 billion devices on a single chip of silicon,” Evans says. The two researchers want to integrate an optical isolator with a tiny semiconductor laser that would let light travel in one direction within a photonic semiconductor circuit and keep it from reflecting back into the laser, where it could create instabilities in the laser’s output.

It is understandable that their peers might be skeptical, Evans says. Researchers around the world have been trying to create integrated photonic isolators since the 1970s and no one has overcome the problem of reflection in photonic circuits.

Evans had a similar experience when he worked with lasers at RCA Labs in Princeton, N.J., before joining SMU. In 1984 all semiconductor lasers were edge-emitting, meaning they generated light from the edge of the chip rather than the surface. Evans and his team proposed a surface-emitting laser to the U.S. Air Force.

“Their reviewers said we could never get light out, much less create a laser,” he recalls, adding that his team wrote a proposal and nevertheless received funding from the Air Force starting in 1985.

In only seven years, Evans’ group got light out of the system and demonstrated surface-emitting lasers with performance efficiencies as good as edge-emitting lasers. When he came to SMU in 1992, the Air Force continued to fund Evans’ work, which resulted in a spin-off company, Photodigm in Richardson, Texas.

Photodigm conducts research for the government and manufactures a range of lasers, most of them edge-emitting lasers that have been improved using processes developed for surface-emitting ones, says Evans. He is Photodigm’s co-founder, vice president and chief technology officer. Another co-founder is Jay Kirk, the Electrical Engineering Department’s lab manager and Evan’s former colleague at RCA. Electrical Engineering Chair and Associate Professor Marc P. Christensen is on the company’s technical advisory board, as is Butler, who worked closely with Evans when he was at RCA and helped lure him to SMU.

Evans has since expanded into medical photonics, working with SMU and Drexel University colleagues on a photodynamic therapy system to treat cancer of the esophagus.

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Marc Christensen

Similar laser-based systems are used commercially, but they are large and water-cooled. The team hopes to create a machine that’s portable and cheap enough for use in every doctor’s office. Their design uses arrays of semiconductor lasers, each no bigger than a grain of sand, inserted into the esophagus via a balloon catheter. The patient is given a photosensitive drug that kills cancer cells during a chemical reaction triggered by the lasers.

Christensen says SMU’s photonics researchers — who include faculty members in electrical engineering, mathematics and physics, plus their graduate students — come together periodically for interdisciplinary meetings because so many fields are involved in creating and understanding photonic devices.

Christensen’s Photonic Architectures Laboratory has received more than $2 million in grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, for a project to make unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, stealthier.

“Today we think of a Predator UAV as flying at 30,000 feet carrying a really nice camera with a long lens that can zoom into an area on the ground and look at it very carefully,” Christensen says. Ideally, the device would be tiny with a flat lens, like a cell phone camera; however, those cameras do not produce images of adequate resolution.

Christensen’s interdisciplinary team has devised a multi-step solution that starts with an array of hundreds of tiny, flat, square cameras and equally tiny, square mirrors placed in a grid pattern that can be mounted on the underside of an aircraft as small as a model airplane. Each camera will provide slightly different information about the subject because each takes a photograph from a slightly different angle.

Computational imaging is then used to combine the numerous low-resolution images to create a sharper image that is akin to one taken by a high-performance camera too heavy to fit on the small aircraft.

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Computational imaging: Each hexagonal
face is a micro-mirror, individually
positioned to create an overall shape.

“Wouldn’t it be great if the camera could determine from its wide shot which objects in the field are most important and be able to zero in on them?” Christensen asks.

Such a camera is under development at SMU. Called an adaptive resolution camera, it would analyze the wide view and use mathematical formulas to identify objects of interest — such as aircraft on the ground.

Instead of simple mirrors, the adaptive resolution camera uses an array of micro-electric machines, called MEMs. Each MEM looks like a mirror that is hundreds of microns across, or about the width of a few human hairs, attached to three even smaller levers. The levers would reposition the mirrors in the desired direction to improve the information collected by the camera’s next photographs to create another, better image — all faster than the blink of an eye.

The smarter camera would automatically put more pixels in the areas of interest and less in those considered unimportant, he says, adding that the resulting picture may look strange by conventional standards, but it would provide more useful information.

The team from the Department of Electrical Engineering in the SMU Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering incorporates skills from physics, mathematics and computer science. Assistant Professor Dinesh Rajan, a specialist in information theory, finds the mathematical route to the best final image, a so-called “goodness value.” Associate Professor Scott Douglas, an adaptive algorithms expert, crafts the formulas to make the system home in on the important details within the big picture. And Professor Panos Papamichalis works on their robustness, making the system more tolerant of the adversities the camera will encounter in daily use.

Integrated circuits make the thousands of necessary computations, and “given the need for miniaturization, the best way to reduce the size of those circuits would make them fully photonic,” Christensen says. That step, however, is some time off. For semiconductor laser structures, Christensen works with Evans.

The two have just started a project, also for DARPA, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Dallas, Photodigm, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. The goal: to develop signal processing with photons, instead of electrons; in other words, computing with light.

To achieve this they must create the photonic equivalent of a semiconductor chip. Most computer chips are made with silicon, which doesn’t emit light very well. A better choice is indium (In) phosphide (P), called a III-V semiconductor, Christensen says. The goal is to emit and control light, one photon at a time.

“At the quantum level you are literally controlling individual photons and providing gain (to amplify signals),” says Christensen. He compares the current state of photonic integrated circuits with the world’s first electronic integrated circuit, invented at Texas Instruments 50 years ago this summer by the late Jack Kilby when he linked a handful of transistors on a single silicon chip. Over the next 50 years, semiconductors evolved from a handful of components on that first chip to hundreds of millions of components on a single chip, he says.

“If you look at the state of photonics processing, it’s about 6 to 15 components,” he says. “It’s like we’re starting today where Jack Kilby was 50 years ago, and it will be interesting to see where a few decades takes the field of integrated photonics.” — Deborah Wormser

Related links:
Gary Evans
Jerome Butler
Dinesh Rajan
Scott Douglas
Panos Papamichalis
Marc Christensen
SMU’s Electrical Engineering research
Department of Electrical Engineering
The Daily Campus: Shade Tree Engineering
Photodigm
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering

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Christensen named 2008 SMU Ford Research Fellow

Marc Christensen, in SMU’s Department of Electrical Engineering, has received an SMU 2008 Ford Research Fellowship.

Christensen, an associate professor and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering in the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, has built a nationally recognized research group in photonics and computational imaging.

His work in applications such as imaging sensors and micro-mirror arrays has been funded by entities ranging from the National Science Foundation to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA.

In 2007, he became a member of the first class of researchers to receive the DARPA Young Faculty Award for his work in active illumination for adaptive multi-resolution sensing.

Currently, Christensen leads a research project that also involves senior faculty from the University of Delaware, University of Texas-Dallas, and Sandia National Laboratory.

Established in 2002 through a $1 million pledge from Gerald Ford, chair of SMU’s Board of Trustees, the fellowships help the University retain and reward outstanding scholars. Each recipient receives a cash prize for research support during the year.
The University’s new Ford Fellows were honored by the SMU Board of Trustees at its May meeting.

Related links:
Marc Christensen
SMU Profile: Marc Christensen
2008 Ford Research Fellows named
Department of Electrical Engineering
Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering