Wireless devices are crowding the airwaves. A 3D database under development at Stevens could help wireless devices pinpoint their location and team up to share spectrum and reduce interference.

By Alan S. Brown
Special to the Stevens News Service

Ten years ago, wireless devices were uncommon. Today, Bluetooth headphones, GPS units, Wi-Fi hotspots, and laptop computers are everywhere. Smart phones connect routinely to the Internet, while wireless networks link devices as diverse as medical monitors, factory sensors, media centers, and printers.

Wireless devices are changing the way we communicate.  Unfortunately, like army ants on the march, they are also devouring all the remaining space on the airwaves as they go. “Wireless applications are coming out of walls, and there’s just not enough broadband spectrum to go around,” said Joe Mitola, Vice President for the Research Enterprise at Stevens Institute of Technology.
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The game-changing financial meltdown of 2008 caught everyone by surprise. A Stevens Institute of Technology professor believes a redesigned financial system and integrated models could do a better job of preventing the next downturn.

By Alan S. Brown
Special to the Stevens News Service

As a boy growing up in Damascus, Syria, Khaldoun Khashanah found mathematics compelling. “What I liked best were the abstract patterns, and math’s ability to reveal the interrelations between the real and the abstract in unique ways. Math lets us look through that window,” Khashanah explained.

Maybe that is why Khashanah, the director of Stevens Institute of Technology’s Financial Engineering program, has a problem with Black Swans.

Black Swans are those seemingly impossible, game-changing events popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book, The Black Swan. Taleb picked the name because Europeans thought all swans must be white, until they discovered black swans in Australia during the Eighteenth Century.

According to Taleb, a Black Swan has three characteristics: First, it is so rare, “nothing in the past can point convincingly to its possibility.” Second, it has very high impact. Third, people “concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” (more…)

Vertical lab for the testing of high-rise plumbing disappears from the waterfront skyline

A durable landmark signifying a moment in Stevens, Hoboken and civil engineering history has disappeared from the famous waterfront that was once characterized by international cargo ships, drydocks and Marlon Brando’s hair-raising scenes from Elia Kazan’s 1954 classic film about mob corruption in the longshoremen’s unions.

Stevens Institute of Technology’s green vertical water-pressure testing lab, known affectionately as “Big John,” has been removed to make way for the completion of a section of the long-planned continuous waterfront promenade that is a signal landmark of a gentler and more gentrified Hoboken shoreline.

To commemorate the demise of the tower, we include below a complete reprint of journalist Michael Mullins’ superb historical account of the structure, as featured in a 2007 edition of the Hoboken Reporter. – Patrick A. Berzinski, executive director, University Communications

2,000 flushes: Toilets tested in green ‘Big John’ building on waterfront

By Michael D. Mullins

“Big John,” or “The Royal Flush,” as it is commonly called, is an 11-story green building on the Hoboken waterfront. It was built 34 years ago with an important duty: To measure the amount of atmospheric pressure required to flush a toilet in a high-rise apartment building. (more…)

Semcer is a Stevens alumnus and chairman of The Micro Stamping Group of Companies

By Tracey Regan
Special to the Stevens News Service

At Micro Stamping headquarters in Somerset, New Jersey, it is largely what is not visible that gives the metal-forming company its edge in the highly competitive world of precision component manufacturing.

Chairman Frank Semcer, Sr. ‘65, an alumnus of Stevens Institute of Technology, has built a global enterprise over the past three decades by reinventing costly and outmoded manufacturing processes through innovative engineering – and keeping his agile, multi-faceted manufacturing operation competitive in the toughest global markets.

In recognition of his pioneering vision and business savvy, Semcer will this month become the first Stevens alumnus to receive the university’s newly created Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. (more…)

Join us to Explore the Culture of “Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stevens”

A recent Stevens tradition returns in celebration of the 140th year of the founding of Stevens! The Founder’s Day program, held in commemoration of the establishment of Stevens Institute of Technology on February 15, 1870, this year will focus on the history of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stevens. Join a panel of entrepreneurs, students, faculty, administrators and alumni in a discussion about the past, present and future of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Stevens.

Following the discussion, a reception will be held in the Babbio Center Atrium. The entire community is encouraged to attend!

Founder’s Day Schedule
1:30 – Registration, Babbio Atrium
1:35 – Welcome and Overview: Provost George Korfiatis
1:40-2:10 – “Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Stevens Model for Road to Success” by Malcolm Kahn, Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
2:10 – Panel Introduction: Professor Thomas Lechler
2:15-3:15 – Panel Discussions with Professor Thomas Lechler as Moderator
3:15-3:30 – Questions and Answers
3:30-4:30 – Reception, Babbio Center Atrium

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
1:30 p.m.
Babbio Center Auditorium & Atrium
(Sponsored by the Office of the Provost)

Program will focus on Greek Literature and Modern Technology

By John Holl
Special to the Stevens News Service

Combining an interest in technical innovation and literature and communications, Stevens Institute of Technology will begin a project in cooperation with the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), “Greece: Ancient Legacy and Modern Technology.”

The mission of the Onassis Foundation emphasizes disseminating information about Hellenic civilization throughout the United States. Stevens embraced this concept by coupling the study of core texts of Greek literature to the study of technology.

Through existing and innovative courses, current and new faculty, colloquia and conferences and work with visiting teachers and lecturers, the project integrates the study of Greek literature with Stevens’ signature institutional focus on technology, invention and entrepreneurship. (more…)

Stevens and the School of Systems and Enterprises launch the Experience Accelerator Design Competition, an innovative Serious Game for Students

Stevens News Service

Stevens Institute of Technology and the School of Systems and Enterprises announce the inaugural Experience Accelerator Design Competition. This competition features prizes up to $10,000 and challenges currently enrolled students from across the world to build an innovative serious game or simulation that enables future technical leaders to gain key experiences that prepare them for the demands of developing and deploying complex systems.

Up to nine finalists will be selected to participate in the final Play-Offs on Stevens campus. Submissions will be judged by a panel of SSE faculty and prize-winners will be announced during the awards banquet on the evening of July 4th, 2010. (more…)

Paper examines history of the three-dimensional structure of viruses

By John Holl
Special to the Stevens News Service

Greg Morgan, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stevens Institute of Technology, was recently awarded the Derek Price/Rod Webster Prize for best paper of 2009 in History of Science by the History of Science Society.

Morgan, who teaches in the College of Arts and Letters at Stevens, was co-author of the paper, “After the Double Helix: Rosalind Franklin’s Research on Tobacco mosaic virus.” Morgan wrote the paper with Angela N. H. Creager, a Professor of History at Princeton University.

The Derek Price/Rod Webster has been awarded annually since 1979 and recognizes the best work in Isis, an official journal of the History of Science Society.

The paper documents “Rosalind Franklin’s speculative theorizing and collaborative scientific work, countering the image of the cautious and overly sensitive ‘Rosy’ of James Watson’s memoir and fleshing out her character as a scientist,” the awards committee wrote. “Their attention to the personal, material, and institutional aspects of this work succeeds in offering a compelling new interpretation of scientific cooperation and competition in the emerging international community of molecular biology.”

The article can be viewed via The University of Chicago Press website:

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/588626?prevSearch=%2528rosalind%2Bfranklin%2529%2BAND%2B%255Bjournal%253A%2Bisis%255D&searchHistoryKey=

By Sharon Guynup

Again this winter and spring, some of the world’s most creative and original mathematical minds will gather weekly to share ideas and brainstorm over concepts and equations. It’s an elite group that speaks a language incomprehensible to nearly anyone outside their field.

In recent years, mathematicians like Stevens’ Alexei Miasnikov have been increasingly active in attempts to solve complex computational problems in groups.

As a consultant to Stevens, Miasnikov made a novel suggestion to mathematics professor Bob Gilman some years back: form a center to bring interested mathematicians together around new mathematical techniques for practical problems in cryptography. His idea sparked the creation of the Algebraic Cryptography Center (ACC) four years ago – where Miasnikov came on board as the newest staff member and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics in October.

But these weekly lectures and discussions are not convened at the Center, or even in Hoboken: They are convened virtually, in cyberspace. This online seminar, like the ACC, is the brainchild of Miasnikov and his young colleagues Alex Myasnikov and Alexander Ushakov, and is a kind of synaptical networking for a growing, international cadre of mathematicians. (more…)

By John Holl
Special to the Stevens News Service

Undergraduate students at Stevens Institute of Technology will have a chance to showcase their knowledge next month as the school plays host to an Ethics Bowl.

Students, playing in teams of three to five people representing each major at the school, will have a chance to examine real-life ethical case studies and come up with solutions. The four teams that score highest will then compete in a finale.

Sponsored by the Gear and Triangle Honor Society, the Stevens Philosophy Club, the National Health Professionals Honor Society, the Student Government Association and others, the competition will take place on Wednesday, February 3, 2010, at 2:00 p.m. in the Babbio Center for Technology Management. The finale will be held a week later on February 10, at 1:00 p.m. in the DeBaun Auditorium.

The competitions are open to the public and additional information is available by contacting ethicsbowl@stevens.edu