I'm excited to learn about all aspects of CIAN's education programs and look forward to being part of the CIAN team. I invite you to contact me with any questions or suggestions.
In my role as education evaluator, I will help the team to measure the learning outcomes of the curriculum, to document the benefits to students of being part of collaborative research, and to gain perspective from industry contacts about what they would like to see in our graduates.
A little about my background: I'm originally from Nogales, Arizona. I've been doing evaluations for many (>25) years and completed my PhD in Educational Psychology in 1996. I have also coordinated science and Honors outreach programs, served as an academic advisor, and taught courses in evaluation, program planning and learning. I volunteer in the Tucson community in animal-assisted therapy and serve on the board of the Arizona Evaluation Network and several "topical interest groups" (TIGs) of the American Evaluation Association (e.g., Organizational Learning & Evaluation Capacity Building, Environmental Program Evaluation). My undergraduate degree was in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

Allison
Allison L. Titcomb, Ph.D.
Education Evaluation Specialist
NSF Research Center for Integrated Access Networks
College of Optical Sciences
The University of Arizona
520-626-2522
atitcomb@optics.arizona.edu
www.cian-erc.org

Dear CIAN Collaborators,

Letting you know that the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant we worked on together has been awarded!

Just heard from NSF Program Director Esther Bolding; NSF will fund 10 REU students per year for 3 years. This will be supplemented by 2 REU positions from base CIAN funding for a total of 12 per year for 3 years:

UA: 4 – Kueppers, Khitrova, Norwood, Seraphin (student services with SROP)
UCSD: 3 – Fainman, Vahdat, Lomakin (student services with STARS)
Berkeley: 1 – Wu (student services with SUPERB)
UCLA: 2 – Huffaker, Jalali (student services with CENS)
Columbia: 2 – Zussman, Bergman (student services with NSEC)

Your work on the proposal made this possible – thanks for your letters of support, research descriptions, advice, and help with the budget (Rick, will be easier next time!).

Please plan to hear from me soon regarding IOU student selection; I'm looking forward to our work together.

Have a great weekend, Meredith --

Meredith Kupinski, Ph.D.
Director of Education
Engineering Research Center
for Integrated Access Networks
University of Arizona
College of Optical Sciences
520.626.3985
meredith@optics.arizona.edu
www.cian-erc.org

CIAN is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. John W. Wissinger to the Professional Staff of the Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), an NSF Engineering Research Center. As Associate Director for Industry Collaboration, Dr. Wissinger will be responsible for establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships between CIAN Faculty and Student Researchers and Industry. He will help facilitate, in a liaison capacity, the expansion of CIAN's Industry Advisory Board and making relevant industry collaborations with the areas of research and education.

Dr. Wissinger is an accomplished and experienced engineer and manager, with a diverse background in product development and business models. He most recently worked at Veeco Instruments (as VP/GM), a global public company manufacturing process equipment, analytic instrumentation, and metrology tools for nanotechnology applications. Prior to that time, he worked for NP Photonics (VP Engineering), a venture-backed startup engineering micro-fiber optical amplifiers and fiber lasers, and for Alphatech Inc. (Division Manager, Signal & Image Processing), a private company which was acquired as BAE Systems Advanced Information Technology Division, where he developed specialized algorithms and software products. Dr. Wissinger received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Rice University, and his PhD in EECS from MIT.

CSE Members awarded the Gordon Engineering Leadership Fellow. Amin Vahdat, Professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering and CSE undergraduate Sarah Esper, have been awarded the Gordon Engineering Leadership Center's Gordon Fellows.

The Gordon Center was established in January 2009 with the mission of educating and training effective engineering leaders who create new products and jobs that benefit society. In order to provide positive role models for students of engineering, the Gordon Center holds an annual awards ceremony to recognize exemplary engineers at the high school, undergraduate, graduate, and professional level. Recipients of the Gordon Fellows Medal not only must be outstanding engineers within their respective fields but must also have a proven record of leadership successes.

To learn more about the Gordon Center's mission and goals, please click here.

As the country presses forward in developing green energy and Los Angeles strives to become a hub of clean technology, UCLA Associate Professor Diana Huffaker noticed there was one thing still missing: a program to train the future leaders of environmental industry in L.A.

So she created it -- and, working with about 20 other professors, won support for it: $3 million in stimulus funding via a highly competitive grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship (IGERT) award.

The Clean Energy for Green Industry Fellowship, designed to develop leaders in environmental energy, could start as soon as the upcoming winter quarter. It will grant Ph.D. students a $33,000 stipend for pursuing coursework in the science, business and policies of clean technology.

"Over the course of the five-year program, we'll graduate 33 Ph.D.s with expertise in energy storage, energy harvesting and energy conservation," Huffaker said.

[More]

The National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship on Clean Energy for Green Industry at UCLA (CGI) is a 3 year fellowship^* that provides a $30,000 stipend/year , tuition, fees, travel stipend to participate in a scientific conference or workshop, internships and international experience. The fellowship will develop leaders in environmental energy through integrated research and coursework in the science, business and policies of clean technology. Completion of a 1-3 month cross-disciplinary internship with an industrial partner or national laboratory is encouraged.

[More]

From Meredith Kupinski.  A Science Night for elementary students was organized by OSC Professor Scott Tyo at Robins Elementary School last Friday evening.  Eleven exhibitors from UA science departments, local industry, and local science clubs participated to share fun demonstrations of science principles with more than 150 students and their families. OSC would like to thank graduate student Samantha White for making the index of refraction an unforgettable lesson by showing a Pyrex beaker disappear in Wesson cooking oil.  OSC undergraduate Devinna Fleming proved lasers are used for more than just pointers by broadcasting her iPod music through a fiber optic. Thanks for sharing your interest in science with young students.  Also thanks to Zachary Denny, Jennifer Harwell, and Kali Wilson for assistance with the preparations.

One of the major initiatives within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is the Broadband USA program (www.broadbandusa.gov). Approx. $10 billion are made available to improve Americas broadband infrastructure - the middle and last mile (also known as the "aggregation" and "access" network) to families, schools, libraries, hospitals, emergency response units, and many more in order to provide them with state-of-the-art internet access especially in currently unserved and/or underserved areas. Grants are awarded on a competitive basis to project proposals which provide the highest merit with respect to the goals of the program. CIAN faculty actively participated in the review process in order to support fast, efficient, and effective funding of these projects.

CIAN Student Retreat Agenda

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Date: Nov. 11-12 , 2009

Location: Hotel Palomar Los Angeles - Westwood, Los Angeles, CA
Address: 10740 Wilshire Boulevard (at Selby Avenue), Los Angeles, CA 90024, Tel: 310.475.8711 or 800.472.8556, Fax: 310.475.5220

CIAN Industry Advisory Board Meeting Agenda

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Date: Nov. 10 2009

Location: Hotel Palomar Los Angeles- Westwood, Los Angeles, CA
Address: 10740 Wilshire Boulevard (at Selby Avenue), Los Angeles, CA 90024, Tel: 310.475.8711 or 800.472.8556, Fax: 310.475.5220

View specific questions and answers on topics related to ERCWeb at the ERCWeb Q and A screen.

NSF has established formal guidelines for conducting site visits to Engineering Research Centers at various stages during the life of the ERC. These guidelines have evolved over time, as have the protocols and criteria governing the reviews conducted by site visit review teams. The aim of all site visits and reviews is to strengthen each ERC and ensure that it is operating and evolving in a manner consistent with the mission and goals of the ERC Program.

The documents provided here are current, and are generally updated annually or as changes occur in NSF policy. The documents give information useful for operating an ERC, about how to prepare an Annual Report/Renewal Proposal and what it should include, about the performance criteria by which the ERCs will be reviewed and about the site visit and how to prepare for one.

Please visit

https://surveys.qrc.com/ercweb/help/ann_rpt_guide.cfm

Working Group III is now officially named "Integrated Transport Platforms"

Regards,

Eugene Cochran