Benjamin Lee’s research focuses on scalable technologies, power-efficient architectures, and high-performance applications. He is also interested in the economics and public policy of computation. He has held visiting research positions at Microsoft Research, Intel Labs, and Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Lee received his B.S. at the University of California at Berkeley, S.M./Ph.D. at Harvard University, and post-doctorate at Stanford University. His research has been honored as a Top Pick by IEEE Micro Magazine (2010), twice as a Research Highlight by Communications of the ACM (2010, 2011), and by an NSF Computing Innovation Fellowship (2009-10).
Duke Engineering New Faculty Lecture Series
Nico Hotz joined the Pratt School of Engineering as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science in July 2011. His research interests are in the area of interfacial transport phenomena and thermodynamics in energy technology including phenomena at the micro- and nanoscale. Thermodynamics aspects of photovoltaics, novel sustainable energy conversion technologies, and chemical reactions are an essential part of his research. Hotz's main focus in research is the combination of ideas, insights and results from traditional energy technology such as thermal power plants with novel and innovative technologies such a fuel cells and photovoltaic cells based on micro- and nanostructured materials. An essential theme of his research is the energetic and exergetic analysis of complex energy conversion and storage systems, especially including renewable and sustainable energy solutions.
Robert Calderbank’s current position is dean of Natural Sciences at Duke University. Previously he was professor of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics at Princeton University, where he also directed the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. Calderbank joined Princeton from AT&T when he retired as vice president for Research after creating the first Research Lab in the world where the primary focus is data at massive scale from business operations. As VP Research he managed AT&T intellectual property, and had line responsibility for licensing revenue. Calderbank is an IEEE Fellow and an AT&T Fellow, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005.
At the start of his career at Bell Labs, Calderbank was responsible for research innovations in a progression of voiceband modem standards that moved communications practice close to the Shannon limit. He also launched the Bell Labs research program in signal processing and error correction for advanced read channels (magnetic recording). These two product families played a significant role in transforming AT&T Microelectronics from a vertically integrated cost center to a commercially based supplier of electronic components. Together with Peter Shor and colleagues at AT&T Labs he then developed the group theoretic framework for quantum error correction. This concept has changed the way physicists view quantum entanglement, and is the foundation for fault tolerant quantum computation.
Together with Vahid Tarokh and Nambi Seshadri, Calderbank developed the idea of correlating signals across different transmit antennas to improve the reliability of wireless communication. Since publication in 1997, this form of coding has progressed from theory to incorporation in a broad range of wireless standards wireless standards including UMTS, IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.16, and IEEE 802.20. Space-time block codes are incorporated in the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) standard, a spread spectrum technology that has been selected by European and Japanese standards bodies as the physical layer for third generation wireless infrastructure known as Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems or UMTS.
Gabriel Lopez is a professor in biomedical engineering, with a secondary appointment in mechanical engineering and materials science. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Washington and BS in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado. His primary professional interests lie in research and education in biomaterials science and engineering, bioanalytical chemistry and biointerfacial phenomena. These areas are generally populated by researchers with formal training in biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, biology and physics, and as such are inherently interdisciplinary and highly collaborative in nature. In the area of research several key accomplishments have had significant impact in their respective fields.
In the area of biomimetic materials, Gabriel's group has developed several intelligent materials systems that are capable of biospecific molecular recognition and transduction of molecular signals to macroscopically observable responses. These materials are finding application in areas such as diagnostics, environmental monitoring and drug discovery.
In the area of biosensing and diagnostic systems, Gabriel has focused on development of methods and instrumentation suited for making measurements on arrays of biospecific and cross-reactive sensors. A key research accomplishment is the development of a suite of methods that span refractometric, fluorometric, electrochemical and colorimetric transduction methods. This comprehensive suite of methodologies brings substantial power to designing biosensing systems for particular applications, and to benchmarking the performance of new methodologies.
In the area of control of microbial interactions with materials, Gabriel's team was among the first to establish principles for formation of fouling resistant surfaces and stimuli-responsive surfaces that could be used for rapid and efficient release of microbial biofilms.
Finally, in the area of analytical separations, he has demonstrated facile methods for the manufacture of integrated nanofluidic systems that allow controllable sample introduction and highly efficient separation using new methodologies such as nanoelectroosmosis. Each of these general areas of research remains ripe for new discoveries and innovations.
Charles Gersbach joined Duke as an assistant professor of biomedical engineering on August 1, 2009. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech and Emory University. His doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Professor Andres Garcia applied genetic repogramming to regulate the transdifferentiation of skeletal muscle cells into bone cells for skeletal regeneration. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2006, he went to The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. for postdoctoral research with Dr. Carlos Barbas on synthetic zinc finger proteins and genome editing. He plans to combine these research areas and examine genome editing to correct genetic disorders as well as apply genetic reprogramming and synthetic gene circuits to tissue regeneration. He has extensive teaching experience and will offer an elective in Spring 2010.
Dr. Marc Sommer is an associate professor in biomedical engineering and a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. He arrived at Duke this year, after five years on the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh where he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and a member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Prior to that, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Sommer received his PhD in Systems Neuroscience from MIT in 1995, after earning Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering, and a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences, from Stanford University in 1990. The focus of Dr. Sommer’s research is studying the functions of circuits within the primate brain. Members of his laboratory record from networks of neurons across widespread brain areas in behaving monkeys. To establish the functions of the networks, they perturb them at specific locations and assess both the circuit-level and behavior-level consequences. Dr. Sommer’s specific interest is in the visual and eye movement systems of the brain. A major goal of his current and future work is to translate the results into clinical and engineering applications. His circuit analysis of the brain has implications for targeting deep-brain stimulation for the treatment of mental and motor disorders, and his findings on the coordination between natural visual and oculomotor circuits are being applied to the design of more biologically-based computer vision systems.
Lee Ferguson is an associate professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering who holds a joint appointment with the Nicholas School for the Environment and Earth Sciences. Lee's research centers around the application of high-performance mass spectrometry techniques to problems in environmental toxicology and chemistry. Active areas of investigation include development of methods for broadband qualitative and quantitative analysis of polar organic contaminants in the environment, as well as the use of proteome analysis techniques for investigating mechanisms and biomarkers of chemical stress in aquatic organisms. Lee earned his Ph.S. in Coastal Oceanography from Stony Brook University in 2002. He earned a BS in Marine Science and a BS in Chemistry from the University of South Carolina. Professor Ferguson's faculty webpage