"I have great respect for theoreticians, but I need to know that what I'm doing will eventually be usable."
Deborah Estrin
After graduating from University High School in West Los Angeles, Deborah Estrin earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980. She went on to earn a master's degree in technology policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. Three years later, Estrin completed the PhD program in computer science at MIT.
After graduating from MIT, Estrin headed back to the West Coast to begin her teaching career. During 1986 she accepted a position as professor of computer science at the University of Southern California (USC), where she taught and conducted research until 2000.
During 1999 Estrin vacationed in Costa Rica, home to lush tropical rain forests. She was awed by the abundant animal and plant life in the rain forests and by the admirable focus of the Costa Rican government and people on preserving their country's biodiversity. Estrin realized that biologists could radically improve their ability to observe complex biological phenomena by using embedded networked sensors. Upon returning from Costa Rica, Estrin began to focus on the impact ENS could have on the study of biology, the environment, and other natural sciences. Among many other uses, ENS could help scientists track and monitor the impact of climate change on endangered ecosystems—a community of organisms and the surrounding environment—and could provide detailed information about the type and level of contamination in the soil or air. In 2000 Estrin left USC to become a professor of computer science at UCLA. As with all scientific endeavors, Estrin's research in the field of ENS depended on funding to carry it from the planning stages to actual testing of the sensing devices in the real world. Soon after joining the faculty at UCLA, she and several colleagues from UCLA, USC, and other universities began working on a massive grant proposal that would give them the funding they needed.
During August of 2002, Estrin and her colleagues heard the news they had anxiously awaited for many months, news of a grant the likes of which most scientists can only dream of: the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Science and Technology Center awarded them a ten-year, $40 million grant to develop ENS technologies for the study of physical and biological systems. The grant allowed for the establishment of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), and Estrin was named the center's first director. Based at UCLA, CENS was one of six academic research centers to receive the 2002 NSF grant, which specifies that the work must be collaborative, involving people from various fields of study. Estrin's center includes professors from a number of different departments at UCLA and other universities, including computer science, electrical engineering, biology, and education. In exchange for the grant money, the research centers must commit to conducting their primary research, and to advancing educational opportunities in local schools and universities and increasing the number of minorities participating in the research. They must also connect with other research institutions as well as the business world and the surrounding community. CENS was ready and able to fulfill the many requirements, and work soon began on developing the initial programs for testing ENS technology.
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Deborah Estrin delivered the keynote at the UMass Boston Center for Coastal Environmental Sensing Networks inaugural conference in April 2007.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
In a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Eli's Choice” written by Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Marcus, a young man with Down syndrome named Eli chooses to drop out of his carefully crafted inclusion placement and opt for a self-contained classroom.
"The kids liked him, they knew him, they spoke to him," said his mother. "They just didn't think of him as a peer." Eli, she says, was tired of "being the only kid who was different."
According to Dr. Gary Siperstein, the central problem for students like Eli is that "in inclusive classrooms they are there physically but not socially." The lack of social integration in high school suggests not only that Eli’s decision is correct but, indeed, inevitable. Siperstein is a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, and cited as the authority in the Wall Street Journal article.
Studies have shown that people with Down syndrome who learn in regular classrooms do much better academically. They also have significantly higher rates of employment after they graduate and earn more money than peers who studied mainly in self-contained classes.
But student attitudes continue to remain the most formidable barrier to inclusion, according to studies by Siperstein’s Center for Social Development and Education. One polled 5,600 seventh- and eighth-grade students from 70 schools across the country on their willingness to interact with students with intellectual disabilities at school and outside the school environment. The study found that "67 percent of young people surveyed would not spend time with a student with an intellectual disability if given a choice, and almost 50 percent would not sit next to one on a school bus."
Siperstein’s groundbreaking research has caused many to step back and ask the question about why social integration of students with disabilities in high school has remained "stagnant." Siperstein believes that most schools don't place enough emphasis on teaching social skills, and don't currently have the necessary structures even if they wanted to.
In the end, though conventional wisdom supports fostering an inclusive environment, not all children will be socially accepted in all classrooms. Parents need to weight the benefits of the classroom setting versus their own definition of happiness and success for their child, according to Siperstein.
The incidence of Down syndrome is estimated at 1 per 733 live births in the United States, 5429 new cases per year. The inaugural World Down Syndrome Day was launched on 2006 in Singapore. There was worldwide shock on February 1, 2008 when Iraqi terrorists maliciously strapped bombs to 2 women with Down syndrome and sent them into 2 different pet markets to explode bombs that killed more than 90 people.
For thirty years, Siperstein has been a leader in the study of attitudes toward persons with learning and behavioral problems, and has helped change the way people think. Members of the center have conducted studies on the attitudes of youth and adults across the U.S. and internationally. Siperstein has been actively involved in the development of disability policy at both the state and national levels. The national Down syndrome congress convention will be help on July 11-13 in Boston.
Earlier this year, in February 2008, Siperstein was named the recipient of the 2007 President’s Public Service Award. UMass Board of Trustees chairman Robert Manning said of the winners, “These individuals and their campus colleagues are the key to what makes the University of Massachusetts such an exciting and rewarding place to study or work. Prospective students know that they will have opportunities to participate in cutting-edge research early on in their academic careers with professors who are among the best in their chosen fields.”
Dr. Siperstein received the prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institute of Health for his research on the social aspects of mental retardation. The highly selective award recognizes researchers who have demonstrated superior competence and outstanding productivity in research endeavors. Less than 5 percent of institute-funded investigators are selected to receive MERIT Awards.
Why motivates Siperstein to focus on social inclusion? He finished a distinguished guest lecture at Columbia University with the answer, showing a picture that one of his students had drawn of several children holding hands with the caption "It is fun to have friends.”
Siperstein's research is part of UMass Boston's Developmental Sciences research cluster. Developmental sciences entail the investigation of progressive changes that occur over the life span of individuals.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Last year, a mathematical calculation of the structure of E8 was unveiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amid great fanfare. E8 is a symmetrical structure discovered in 1887 by Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie. No one thought the structure could ever be understood. E8 was mapped by an international group of 18 mathematicians, including UMass Boston Professor Alfred Noel.
Information about the accomplishment sent to journalists was embargoed until the night before the press conference. The story appeared in the usual places (Scientific American), but also in much less usual places such as the New York Times, the BBC, le Monde, and many, many others, plus generated a lively discussion in the blogsphere.
The coverage tended to focus on how the solution to a century-old mathematical problem may help solve the mysteries of the universe. Among those is the theory of everything that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena – which physicists have sought for nearly two centuries.
“It could well be E8 that determines the deep inner structure of the universe,” said Jeffrey D. Adams, a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland who led the project.
The publicity obscured the real breakthrough. While it was known how to do the E8 calculations in principle, they had so far been computationally intractable. The innovative large-scale computing that was key to the work likely spells the future for how longstanding math problems will be solved in the 21st century. Perhaps even more significant, the team was a rare collaboration for mathematicians who usually work alone or in small groups and rarely turn to supercomputers.
Symmetry is a fundamental principle of nature, and behind anything symmetric is a mathematical object such as a matrix. A matrix has entries of numbers in the cells formed by the rows and columns. The E8 matrix has 205 billion entries. If each entry was written in a one-inch square, the matrix would measure more than seven miles on each side.
The team that produced the E8 calculation began work four years ago. They meet together at the American Institute of Mathematics every summer, and in smaller groups throughout the year. Their work requires a mix of theoretical mathematics and intricate computer programming.
According to team member David Vogan from MIT, "Even after we understood the underlying mathematics it still took more than two years to implement it on a computer." And then there came the problem of finding a computer large enough to do the calculation.
A mathematician-programmer, Noel’s role within the group was to develop mathematical techniques that could be programmed on a computer. Vogan is one of Noel’s mentors.
For another year, the team worked to make the calculation more efficient, so that it might fit on existing supercomputers, but it remained just beyond the capacity of the hardware available to them. The team was contemplating the prospect of waiting for a larger computer when a team member pointed out an ingenious way to perform several small versions of the calculation, each producing an incomplete version of the answer. These incomplete answers could be assembled to give the final solution. The cost was having to run the calculation four times, plus the time to combine the answers. The computation took 77 hours of computer time on the supercomputer Sage at the University of Washington.
“The E8 computation, although exceptional, is only the first step in a vast and complex program which will last for several years,” Noel said.
The effort to map E8 is part of a larger National Science Foundation sponsored project to map out all of the mathematical descriptions of symmetry for continuous objects like cones and spheres. The project is called the Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations. It has made software available both for educational and research use. The software is copyrighted by Noel and three others, and available under an open public license.
Noel's collaborator at UMass Boston, Professor Steven Jackson has become a member of the Atlas project. So far the team has developed further theories that are to be implemented in the software. Professor Jackson presented these new results at the last Atlas meeting held in March 2008 at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Before joining the Department of Mathematics at UMass in 1998, Noel was a research engineer at Peritus Software Services in Billerica and a lecturer at local colleges and universities. Noel’s research on representation theory and math education has been published in dozens of mathematics journals. Noel currently splits his time between teaching Calculus and Probability and Statistics courses at UMass and conducting research at MIT, where he is a visiting scholar.
This leaves the question of why the story of E8 took off in the press. According to Jeffrey Adams, "That is harder to understand than the polynomials for E8."
However, if this structure turns out to be fundamental to how the universe works, then it seems to indicate our universe is exceptional, and perhaps singular. But, whether this theory works perfectly or not, it is undoubtedly true that the fundamental nature of our universe can be described by mathematics.
Noel is part of UMass Boston's Computational Sciences, Analysis and Modeling research cluster. Representing an intersection of computer science, engineering, applied math, and the sciences (biology, physics, chemistry), the primary focus of the field is the construction of models and numerical analysis techniques to simulate, evaluate, and solve problems using computers.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Physics professor D.V.G.L.N. Rao and his protégé post-doc Chandra S. Yelleswarapu finish each other’s sentences as they explain the workings of their invention, the Fourier Phase Contrast Microscope, which images minute organisms more realistically and in greater detail than the microscopes widely used by biologists around the world.
This year, in a rare honor for a UMass Boston faculty member, Rao is being recognized, along with seven others throughout the UMass system, with a $30,000 award from the University of Massachusetts Office of Commercial Ventures and Intellectual Property (CVIP) that will help them develop the microscope commercially. Dr. Rao’s microscope is the only UMass Boston technology to receive the award.
“We regard Dr. Rao is an innovator way ahead of his time," says Susan Daudelin, the director of industry relations in the UMass Boston Venture Development Center, which manages the CVIP program on campus and acts as the incubator and promoter of university research.
Rao has been a Professor of Physics at UMass Boston for forty years, and has been producing original research for the same amount of time. In 1973, the year of the first graduating UMass Boston class, he published a research paper that was recognized by the American Physical Society. Since then, he has published over 100 papers and procured five patents.
Rao and Yelleswarapu’s microscope is based on a dramatic improvement upon standard phase contrast microscopes, which work by exploiting a property of light, its “phase,” which shifts when light travels through transparent or semi-transparent materials. Human eyes can’t detect phase shifts, but through the use of a device called a “phase plate,” the phase shifts are converted into variations in the light’s brightness, allowing scientists to get a more detailed view of the inner workings of biological specimens.
When phase contrast microscopes were first introduced in the 1930’s, they eventually won their inventor a Nobel Prize, but they had their drawbacks: Cells appear to be two-dimensional, and are surrounded by a white “halo.”
Rao and Yelleswarapu’s update uses lasers, liquid crystals, and a lens that performs a “Fourier transform” on the light waves, which create brighter, clearer, three-dimensional images. Additionally, the team’s design is also more rugged, mechanically simpler, and simpler to operate than the models used in laboratories today.
“It uses no moving parts, and is a lot more user-friendly,” Rao says.
Rao and Yelleswarapu plan to use the $30,000 from the grant to create a working prototype that will help them convince a manufacturer to sell their microscope. Rao is delighted to have the extra resources because they will not only help him introduce his invention to the world, but it will allow him to focus on what he does best.
“I’m a teacher and a basic researcher,” Rao says. “Luckily, what I do for my basic research has real-world applications.”
Rao teaches two classes and has served as the Graduate Program Director for the past ten years. He has shepherded scores of students into their own careers, and has given all of them, even undergraduates, opportunities to conduct original research in his laboratory, producing new insights into optics and lasers.
The microscope is just one of those real-world applications. There’s also mammogram technology that can detect “micro-calcifications,” a laser eye-protection project, optical holographic storage, and photonic applications for nano materials.
Massachusetts has been talking about the need for a state ocean management plan for more than fifteen years. This year, everything fell into place.
Earlier in the year, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded a three-year $8.2 million grant to the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass Boston, to focus on developing information and tools that improve the integration of natural and social science with ocean management.
In May 2008, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed the nation's first comprehensive ocean planning law to reduce tensions among maritime users and guide energy development. A handful of companies have announced plans to build wind farms, liquefied natural gas terminals, and projects designed to capture energy from the tides.
Many user groups think the current state of affairs off the coast is akin to the wild west. The bill as an opportunity to manage ocean sprawl based on sound science, smart economics, and sensible management principles.
The state's Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian A. Bowles must develop the plan by the end of 2009 with input from the public and 17-member advisory commission.
Stephen P. Crosby, dean of UMass Boston's McCormack Graduate School, hopes the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant will help. The grant focuses on science integration efforts that will directly support the state’s formal ocean management planning and decision making processes. Senior research fellow, Robbin Peach, assists Crosby on the project.
Peach and her colleagues on the Massachusetts Ocean Management Task Force initiated the concept of securing a grant. The Task Force, comprised of state and local officials and private individuals representing diverse ocean user groups, met between June 2003 and March 2004 to develop recommendations for state action. To maintain momentum, Peach organized a group called Massachusetts Ocean Partnership (MOP), now housed at UMass Boston. MOP is a collaborative partner with planning efforts underway.
With the Moore Foundation grant, MOP will tackle questions such as what tools exist and what tools need to be developed to evaluate economic tradeoffs when considering resource management options. MOP also will convene working groups in a non-regulatory setting to seek collaborative solutions to difficult ocean management issues and options for consideration in formal decision-making processes.
Achieving the management coordination, integration of scientific information, and stakeholder involvement will require new levels of collaboration among public and private entities involved in ocean activities.
“The University of Massachusetts Boston was a logical home for this (grant) initiative,” says Crosby, “with coastal and ocean scientists and policy specialists already conducting research on the environmental health and economic importance of coastal waters.”
UMass Boston played a leading role on the scientific committees decades earlier. The Boston Harbor cleanup project was hampered by the scarcity and poor quality of available information in such key areas as water quality and pollution sources.
The health of ocean waters and fisheries suffers from the gaps created by differing laws and mixed jurisdictions, and failure to manage the coastal-ocean ecosystem as a whole. Upon final adoption, the ocean plan will be incorporated into the existing coastal zone management plan and enforced through the state’s regulatory and permitting processes.
Concern over competing ocean uses is growing nationwide, and some states, including California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Florida, and North Carolina, have created ocean authorities or announced plans to better manage state waters. But Massachusetts has now become a leader in ocean policy in this country.
Friday, May 30, 2008
The elderly face high costs -- from health care to housing -- and many won't have enough money to pay the bills. Rather than leaving people in the financial shadows, a novel tool developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston is sparking a revolution to keep aging lively and affordable.
To measure the living costs of people aged 65 and older, the Gerontology Institute developed the Elder Economic Security Standard, a geographically (county-by-county) based tool that helps elders calculate the appropriate income necessary to cover basic costs such as housing, medical expenses, food, transportation and some leisure activities. It is a new and more accurate measure of an independent elder’s income needs.
The standard reveals that many elders can't cover their expenses, and its causing concern around the nation.
In Boston, the median household income of people aged 65 and older is $17,470. The institute calculates that to meet basic living costs, including fair-market rent, transportation, and health care, an elderly couple needs $30,557. By contrast, the average annual Social Security benefit for couples is $19,776, creating a gap for elders without additional savings.
To close the gap, Wider Opportunities for Women has launched an ambitious campaign that includes organizing, advocacy, and research on a national level. With the support of The Atlantic Philanthropies, an organization dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people, a total of 20 states will participate. The Gerontology Institute is Wider Opportunities for Women's national research partner to develop and apply the Elder Economic Security Standard.
The impact of the Elder Economic Security Standard has already been felt. In California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin where Wider Opportunities for Women and the Institute have been working, editorials by major newspapers and features on television are ringing the alarm. Wider Opportunities for Women has compiled the results on a special web site.
In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick has agreed to convene a statewide commission on long-term care and innovative outreach efforts to help seniors overcome their resistance to enrolling in public support programs.
The initiative is particularly critical as we face today’s economy. This year, seniors relying upon Social Security for the majority of their income were forced to choose among such necessities as heating oil, prescription drugs, and food as they received the lowest cost of living adjustment from Social Security yet.
Laura Henze Russell and Ellen Bruce of the Gerontology Institute developed the methodology and format of the Elder Economic Security Standard. They were inspired to ask the difficult question: how much does it really cost for older adults to live independently, taking into account differing factors such as health, life circumstances, family status, and geography; and what happens to their costs as life circumstances change over time?
"We really need a fresh look at the network of support programs for elders, because so many of the guidelines were set so many years ago," said Russell, director of the Elder Economic Security Program at the Gerontology Institute. "One of our hopes is that we're educating seniors that it's not necessarily their fault that they can't makes ends meet," said Bruce.
The Gerontology Institute developed the Elder Economic Security Standard with support from The Boston Foundation.
The Gerontology Institute carries out basic and applied social and economic research on aging and engages in public education on aging policy issues, with an emphasis in four areas: income security, health (including long-term care), productive aging, and basic social and demographic research on aging.
The University of Massachusetts at Boston and the Harvard School of Public Health will create a research center devoted to health and healthcare disparities.
A five-year, $7.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities will fund the HORIZON Center, named for its goal of providing healthy options, research, interventions, and community organizing. The center will work with the Cherishing our Hearts and Souls Coalition, a group in Roxbury, which has the youngest, poorest, least educated, and least employed people among Boston's neighborhoods.
Boston’s racial and ethnic groups have different risks of illnesses and death. Black residents, for example, have higher rates of preterm births, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, hospitalization, cancer mortality, and premature death, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
HORIZON pioneers a new way to discover and implement promising solutions to address this unequal burden of poor health, called community-based participatory research. This is a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. If research is to result in findings that are practical and culturally appropriate, the researcher and the researched community must work together. Community-based participatory research also goes beyond linking health to medical care, lifestyles and genes to consider other powerful determinants of health, specifically the social conditions in which we are born, live and work.
Of the billions of dollars spent on health care research in the U.S., only an estimated $45 million is allocated to community-based participatory research, but that amount is growing. The call to the call to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities is one of the key drivers. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has organized a national partnership to end health disparities. Unnatural Causes, a groundbreaking documentary series on public television, exploring America's racial and socioeconomic inequities in health, further dramatized the challenge.
Many leaders of community-based public health groups have stories of disappointment and missed opportunities, experiences that foster an unhealthy skepticism about whether academia can be a trustworthy partner. The world of biomedical science can seem far away when you are dealing with immediate problems such as poverty, racism, and environmental conditions.
"But it's a total myth that underserved communities have no interest in research," Baquet said. "It's just that it has not been presented in a way that they can consider the benefits. Trust is the issue," according to Dr. Claudia Baquet, director of the University of Maryland Comprehensive Center for Health Disparities, who spoke at a conference earlier this year at UMass Boston also sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health and community outreach organizations.
Celia Moore, chairperson of the Psychology Department at UMass Boston, and leader of the HORIZON initiative, "We propose to increase the number of local agencies, community organizations and residents who contribute to and participate in research, training, health promotion, and community organizing activities, and focus them on the common goal of reducing the health disparities."
“We hope that what we learn and put into practice in our own community can eventually benefit urban residents across the nation,” said James H. Ware, dean for academic affairs at Harvard School of Public Health.”
The HORIZON Center's four core missions, as well as its research and pilot projects, are all designed to strengthen the evidence-based practices and strategies for understanding and training practitioners in reducing health disparities.
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