Don Dean, Director of Human Resources, served as speaker of ceremonies at Polytechnic's Annual Employee Service Awards Ceremony commemorating a combined 605 years of service by 43 Polytechnic employees.  The Employee Service Awards, acknowledged in 5-year intervals, come at time when the dedication and commitment of the faculty and staff is especially important to ensure Poly's future success, noted Polytechnic President Jerry Hultin.  This sentiment was reiterated by Prof. John Falcocchio, a 35-year hononree, who, after meeting a Brooklyn girl in Venezuela and following her back to the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in the early 1960's, observed that "then, as now, NYU-Poly faced challenges in a changing academic environment," and persevered by advancing new technology and research to address world problems. The 40-year tenure of Leroy Copeney, Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Technician II, was commended by Department Head Jonathan Chao, a 20-year honoree, who remarked on the merits of Copeney's ability to change with the times and keep pace with an industry that transformed itself from the analogue to the digital age.

Leroy Copeney, 40-year Polytechnic employee (top); and, John Falcocchio and President Hultin (bottom, from left).

Other Employee Service Award honorees included:

5 Years of Service
Paulette Bancroft, Vivian Chan, Richard Feltman, Barbara Hickernell, Greys Jessurum, Kevin Korpics, Ann Lubrano, Melissa Melendez, Jose Pinto, Kari Schwartz
10 Years of Service
Carol Campbell, Ellen Daniels, John Di Bartolo, Dennis Dintino, Robert Griffin, Lisa Hellerstein, Bohdan Hoshovsky, Dwane Lada, Bharadwaj Rao,  Ivan Selesnick, Jonathan Soffer, Stuart Steele, Ana Torres,  Juan Vilchez, Gaoyong Zhang, Nina Ziv
15 Years of Service
Jonathan Chao, Valerie Davis, Harold Sjursen, Yu Zhang
20 Years of Service
Lorcan Folan, Phyllis Frankl, Rona Tyson, Walter Zurawsky
25 Years of Service
Maureen Braziel, Mary Cowman, Beverly Johnson, Kok-Ming Leung, Cheryl McNear, Said Nourbakhsh
30 Years of Service
Richard Wener
35 Years of Service
John Falcocchio
40 Years of Service
Leroy Copeney

2007 NYC Science and Engineering Fair award recipients

In association with the NYC Board of Education and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), Polytechnic's Office of Admissions hosted the New York City Science and Engineering Fair (NYCSEF) Awards Ceremony for students on April 18, 2007, in the University's Pfizer Auditorium. Susan Appel, NYCSEF Director, and representatives from the NYC Department of Education and NYAS were on hand to acknowledge student achievements.

Beverly Johnson, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Executive Director of Polytechnic's YES Center observed, "The award ceremony recognizes the accomplishments of hard working students who have won honors, as well as the commitment and sacrifice of their parents and teachers who have shown great determination in facilitating their young scholars' participation, efforts and success." Joy Colelli, Polytechnic's Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, agreed, "This is NYC Board of Education and family participation at its finest and Polytechnic Institute of NYU is proud to be a leading force in this competition."

In the event of an emergency evacuation, Emergency Personnel will provide appropriate instructions. "Emergency Packs" containing bullhorns, flashlights and other equipment are located at each security desk.  A member of the University Administration will direct the use of the packs. Weather permitting, stay outside the building at least 100 feet from the entrance. If you must go to another building, use the following chart to determine the best site:

• If Wunsch ... go to Dibner or Rogers/Jacobs.
• If ... go to Wunsch or Rogers/Jacobs.
• If Rogers/Jacobs ... go to Dibner or Wunsch.
• If Othmer ... go to Dibner auditorium or gymnasium.
• If Civil Engineering Building ... go to Dibner or Wunsch.
  

If you are directed to leave campus, go to City Tech at 300 Jay Street. If City Tech is also evacuated, go to St. Francis College at 180 Remsen Street. If you leave the campus in an emergency situation and cannot contact your supervisor or instructor, check the NYU-Poly web site to determine if you need to report to a location. After you have arrived in a safe location and are able to do so, email the Polytechnic disaster email account applicable to you based on your position at the University and verify your safety to the University.

The email accounts for emergencies:

• Students:  Polydrstu@yahoo.com
• Faculty:  Polydrfac@yahoo.com
  
• Staff: Polydrsta@yahoo.com
  

In the event that Yahoo’s email systems are not functioning, alternate email accounts have been set up at Google's gmail system: Students, Poly.Polydrstu@gmail.com; Faculty, Poly.Polydrfac@gmail.com; and, Staff, Poly.Polydrsta@gmail.com. Please include the following information in your email when notifying the University of your status:

1. Your full name;
   
2. Your physical status (e.g.: well, injured, etc.);
   
3. Your location i.e.: at home, with relatives or friends, at another campus building);
   
4. Your contact information (phone, email, etc.); and,
   
5. Any other information you would like to pass along specific to the situation that occurred.

Polytechnic's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is hosting a conference on "High Performance Switching and Routing"  (HRSP) on March 31 and June 1, 2007.  The event, sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society, will address various factors arising new specifications for the packet switches and routers, and new challenges to the equipment vendors and network providers when designing and operating next generation switches and routers. 

For more information, visit the HPSR Conference website.

The forum was organized in cooperation with the French National School of Transportation and Infrastructure and the School of Engineering of the City of Paris, and with the local leadership of the University of New Orleans and Tulane University. It was sponsored by the French Associations of Mayors, the French Government (Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure and Ministry of Environment & Sustainable Development), the French Ambassador to the United States, the French General Consulate in New Orleans, and the “ECORISE” Consortium of Universities.

The long-term purpose of the Colloquium is to establish an international emergency forum of city officials and local governments to assess the best methods of sustainable recovery through the rebuilding of critical city infrastructure. It is also expected that this forum will further the dialogue of French and American cities on the issue of sustainable urban development.

Go here for more information on the ECORISE Forum.

Lightfair Installation

 "A Unified Toolkit for Accessing Human Interface Devices in Pure Data and Max/MSP", New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), New York, NY.  Steiner is presenting his ongoing work on a software toolkit for building musical and visual instruments using human interface devices such as game controllers and graphics tablets.  The focus of the work is encapsulating the relevant concepts into software objects which encourage the spirit of play, much how most musicians learn their instruments.

Lightfair Installation -- In conjunction with other project members, Steiner will be presenting his work on a cafeteria where the ceiling and all of the walls were covered by computer-controlled surfaces of light.  These surfaces were driven using 70,000 tri-color LEDs networked together and controlled by a single computer.  Various videos were composed specifically for this space to create an dynamic, immersive light environment.

Neutral Radical Molecules Ordered in Self-assembled Monolayer Systems for Quantum Information Processing, V. Tsifrinovich, with A.Tamulis, S.Tretiak, G.Berman and D.Allara. Chem. Phys. Lett., 436, 144 (2007).

Dr. "Bud" Griffis with wife, Nancy, and Golden Eagle.

“Engineering Failures Discovered by Katrina”, Journal of Science and Technology, published March 2007.

“Construction Challenges in Maglev Transport”, published in Proceedings of the CRC 2007 Construction Research Congress, with presentation in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island, May 6, 2007

Dr. Griffis also received a Golden Eagle Award at a dinner on March 31, 2007 hosted by the Society of American Military Engineers Academy of Fellows.

Dr. Jonathon Chao has co-authored with Dr. Bin Liu High Performance Switches and Routers, published by John Wiley  in March 2007.  The hardcover publication covers up-to-date topics in high performance switches and routers, and includes basic and advanced algorithms, architectures, and implementations of different aspects of the routers. Topics include high-speed route lookup, packet classification, packet scheduling, buffer management for quality of service, large-capacity packet switches, optical packet switches and network processor.

For more information about Dr. Chao's book, go to High Performance Switches and Routers on Amazon.com .

Dr. Frank Cassara

Professor Frank A. Cassara of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering received the 2007 Athanasios Papoulis Education Award from the Long Island Section of the IEEE for "outstanding contributions and dedication to furthering engineering and technology within the Long Island community and nationwide." The award is named after Polytechnic Institute of NYU Electrical Engineering Professor Athanasios Papoulis, and is presented to educators in engineering, science, or mathematics living or teaching within the boundaries of the Long Island Section of the IEEE who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in innovative teaching techniques.

Dr. Elza Erkip

 Dr. Elza Erkip was named Principle Investigator for a $175K grant awarded by the National Science Foundation for "Joint Source and Channel Coding for Wireless Networks."  This research outlines a cross-layer approach between the application layer and the physical layer to address problems relating to random time variations, interference resulting from the broadcast nature of wireless signals, the wireless spectrum's limitations, and optimizing mobile terminals for devices with small batteries. These features become especially limiting for applications such as multimedia over wireless and low power sensor networks, where maintaining the end-to-end signal quality given the specific system resources is difficult. The objective is to design joint source and channel coding techniques to minimize the end-to-end source distortion.

Go here for more information on this NSF grant. 

George J. Doundoulakis

NYU-Poly Alumnus George J. Doundoulakis '53, a World War II espionage hero and principal designer of the world renowned radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, passed away at his home in North Bellmore, NY on Saturday, March 17, 2007. He was 85.

Doundoulakis in Crete.

At the start of World War II, 20-year old Doundoulakis assisted with the evacuation of British troops from the island of Crete after the Axis invasion. He then went on to form an intelligence network which participated in successful attacks on German aircraft and fuel depots. Information produced by his organization led to the destruction of enemy convoys bound to reinforce General Irwin Rommel in North Africa. For this work, Mr. Doundoulakis was awarded the King's Medal for Courage on the recommendation of Great Britain's General Montgomery. Doundoulakis later joined the United States Army and was trained in espionage by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). As an espionage agent, he directed covert OSS intelligence in Greece and undertook hazardous missions into German-occupied cities (as a spy in civilian clothes) to evaluate intelligence first-hand. Those efforts led to the destruction of enemy shipping concentrations in Volos harbor. For his work in the OSS, he was awarded the Legion of Merit.

Radio Telescope at Arecibo, PR.

After World War II, Doundoulakis returned to the United States and earned his Masters of Science degree in Physics at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute under the renowned Physicist and X-ray crystallographer, Paul Peter Ewald.   As director of research and development at General Bronze Corporation, Doundoulakis led design projects for the Distant Early Warning Line, the United States' early warning defense system in the Arctic.  From there, he went on to design the prototype for the world's largest single-unit radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which was designated by the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) as an IEEE Electrical Engineering Milestone and by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) as an ASME Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

This antenna has produced detailed radar maps of the surface of Venus, made detailed studies of Earth's ionosphere, and led to major contributions to studies of pulsars and hydrogen gas in galaxies. The design was patented by his brother, Helias Doundoulakis, a 1960 alum of Polytechnic, who designed the legs by which the electrical structure was suspended.

George Doundoulakis devoted the bulk of his working life to research and development of new technologies in the areas of television, facsimile, automotive engines, batteries for powering automobiles and electronic information retrieval.  He is survived by: his wife Chris, son James Douglas, daughter Rose Eve, brother Helias, grandson Tyler George Douglas, and many extended family members and friends.