Instructors

Cluster 1 – Adventures in Embedded Computer Systems
Rajesh Gupta, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
Professor Gupta joined the UCSD faculty in November 2002, and in May, became the first occupant of the Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Embedded Microsystems. Previously, he taught at UC Irvine, where he arrived in 1996 after spending three years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1993. From 1986-89, he was a senior design engineer at Intel Corporation. In 1995, Gupta was the recipient of a five-year NSF CAREER Award, for architecture and synthesis of embedded systems. Among professional activities, he is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Design and Test of Computers, and at UC Irvine was Cal-(IT)2's layer leader in charge of Interfaces and Software Systems. Gupta is author or co-author of three patents and over 120 research articles. He wrote "Co-Synthesis of Hardware and Software for Digital Embedded Systems" (Kluwer 1995).

Cluster 2 – Engineering Design and Control of Kinetic Sculptures
Nate Delson, Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Cluster 3 – Living Oceans & Global Climate Change
Joel Norris, Professor, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Professor Norris received his B.S. in Planetary Science (Geophysics) from the California Institute of Technology in June 1990 and his Ph.D. from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in August 1997. Before coming to Scripps, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a visiting scientist in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University and worked at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

Cluster 4 – Earthquakes in Action
Benson Shing, Professor, Structural Engineering
P. Benson Shing received a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983, and continued as a research engineer and lecturer at Berkeley for a year and a half. Shing joined the faculty at the University of Colorado's Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering in 1985, rising from assistant to associate professor in 1990, and full professor in 1995. He was a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano and the University of Trenton, both in Italy, for five months in 1993. He has won a variety of awards during his career, including the American Society of Civil Engineer's Arthur M. Wellington Prize in 1997, and the Alan H. Yorkdale Award from the American Society of Testing and Materials in 1991 and 1993. He was a keynote speaker at the 1996 Italian National Conference on Masonry Mechanics, and won the Outstanding Conference Paper Award at North American Masonry Conferences in 1990, 1993, and 1999.

Cluster 5 – A Journey to Nano-Photonics
Yeshaiahu (Shaya) Fainman, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Shaya Fainman joined the UCSD faculty in July 1990, after teaching for two years at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1983, he earned his Ph.D. from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, where he won the Miriam and Aharon Gutvirt Prize in 1982. From 1983-88, Fainman was a post-doctoral researcher at UCSD. He has been a Fellow of the Optical Society of America since 1995, and has been a Topical Editor of the society's Journal. He was also Editor of the International Journal on Optical Memory and Neural Networks. Fainman heads up UCSD's Ultrafast and Nano-scale Optics Group.

Cluster 6 – Exploration of Physics of Waves and Stars
Brian Keating, Professor, Physics
Dr. Keating received his B.S. in Physics from Case Western Reserve University and both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University. He has served as a Research Assistant with the NASA Langley Research Center and as an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He arrived at UCSD in 2004 and works with the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS).

Cluster 7 – Bioengineering: The Amazing Red Blood Cell
Robert Skelton, Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Robert E. Skelton is the Daniel L. Alspach Professor of Dynamics Systems and Controls at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. He joined UC San Diego in 1996, after serving as a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University from 1975-1996. Skelton began his career at the Marshall Space Flight Center, working first with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and then Sperry Rand for 12 years. He has been involved with spacecraft control (SKLAB and Hubble Space Telescope) for many years and has served on the National Research Council's Aeronautics and Engineering Board. Skelton is a Fellow of AIAA and IEEE, and has published three books and more than 100 journal papers.