CESTM Named Key Site of National Microchip Network
By Christine Hanson McKnight
In an important step in New York State�s bid to attract semiconductor industries, the University at Albany and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have been chosen to participate in the prestigious semiconductor industry Focus Center Program. The University and RPI will be part of a collaborative entity to be known as the Focus Center at New York (FC-NY), which will also include Cornell University and the University at Stony Brook. FC-NY will be headquartered at Albany�s Center for Environmental Sciences and Technology Management (CESTM).
Governor George Pataki congratulates President Hitchcock
on August 11 on the new Semiconductor Focus Center,
as Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and
Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver look on.The FC-NY collaboration, which will conduct research for new generations of more powerful computer chips, is part of the national Focus Center in Interconnects, chosen in a competitive process by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its members, in addition to Albany and RPI, are the Georgia Institute of Technology, which will administer the program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and Cornell. Georgia Tech is expected to act chiefly as the negotiating agent for the program, while the primary research will be carried out by the universities in FC-NY.
Governor George Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who announced the FC-NY program during a press conference at CESTM on Aug. 11, provided key support for the team�s successful bid by committing $5 million a year in state funds for the next five years. That commitment is in addition to $10 million the state has already set aside for a new wing to CESTM, which will house a pilot semiconductor manufacturing and workforce training facility operated by the University�s Center for Advanced Thin Film Technology (CAT). The combined federal, state and industry funding for the national Focus Center is expected to exceed $50 million by 2001.
"We have great scientists and great facilities here to help us prepare for the 21st Century," the governor said.
The new center will develop the science and technology of interconnects, the complex signal-carrying conduits in the computer chip that are universally recognized as the technology driver for increased chip speed and performance. In the last 20 years, the size of each of the millions of transistors on the chip has shrunk to 1/1,000th the width of a human hair.
Officials said the development of the centers is the most important initiative by the semiconductor industry since 1987, when the industry formed SEMATECH, a consortium of U.S. chip manufacturers located in Austin, Texas.
"We look forward to working with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and all team members to further advance the state�s technological and economic stature in the high tech world of computer chips," University President Hitchcock said. She also praised "the proactive leadership, bold vision, and continued commitments" of Governor Pataki and the legislative leadership.
James Meindl, director of the Microelectronics Research Center at Georgia Institute of Technology and director of the national Focus Center program, said, "I believe that the faculty, staff and student members of the Focus Center represent the most potent academic team that has ever been assembled to attack the most critical problem of microelectronics, which is interconnections. The leadership of professors Alain Kaloyeros of Albany and Shyam Murarka of RPI was a key ingredient in our successful Focus Center proposal."
Kaloyeros, a professor in the Department of Physics and director of the University�s CAT, stated, "The Capital Region is reaching �critical mass� in the high technology infrastructure required to compete in a global economy.
"The FC designation, along with our existing state-of-the-art 200mm wafer test fab, and the upcoming groundbreaking for the 300mm wafer pilot manufacturing and workforce training facility at Albany, are key ingredients in the formation of a Long Island-Upstate New York high tech corridor, leading to the creation of thousands of high tech jobs. We are thrilled to partner with the best researchers in the world at Georgia Tech, Stanford, and MIT to deliver innovative solutions to the semiconductor industry."
Kaloyeros, along with Hitchcock and Silver, was part of a celebration at CESTM on June 3, when the State Assembly award CAT a $500,000 grant to create the Institute for Fuel Cell Science and Technology. The Institute, a partnership among government, industry and major research centers in the state, will provide client-driven technology development that supports the commercialization of key technologies used in both fuel cells and environmental instrumentation.
"I�ll make you this promise," said Silver on that occasion. "You keep expanding, and building partnerships with New York State�s businesses, spurring high-tech job creation in the Capital Region and around the state, and we�ll keep writing the checks and coming to celebrate your success."
Hoffmann Becomes New Dean of Arts & Sciences
By Vinny Reda
Richard J. Hoffmann, former interim dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences at Iowa State University, became the University�s new Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences on Aug. 1.
Richard J. Hoffmann
Hoffmann was Iowa State�s associate dean of arts and sciences in 1993 and took over the interim position in 1997. A professor of zoology and genetics, his research on evolutionary genetics and asexual reproduction has been generously supported over the last 20 years by the National Science Foundation and other funding sources.
"I am delighted to announce that Dr. Richard J. Hoffmann has accepted our call to serve as the next Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences," said Judy Genshaft, the University�s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, at the official announcement of Hoffmann�s appointment on May 22.
"I am confident that Dr. Hoffmann will be an outstanding leader for the College, and I know from commentary received during the concluding phases of the search process that many, many on campus also strongly believe that his professional stature and experience are an excellent match for our institutional needs and objectives in the years ahead."
Hoffmann, who will also join the Department of Biological Sciences faculty, received his BS degree from the College of William and Mary in 1969, and both his 1971 master�s and 1974 Ph.D. degrees in biological sciences from Stanford University. He was the principal investigator at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory during the summers of 1983-85 and 1987-89.
In May, Hoffmann said, "I am excited by the prospect of coming to the University at Albany. I regard it as a rare opportunity to be invited to join the enthusiastic, forward-looking faculty, staff, and administration of a university poised to move ahead.
"I am also very pleased by the investment that the citizens of New York are making in public higher education. I have met many capable, committed people at the University � faculty, staff, students and administrators alike � and I look forward to working with all of them."
Stewart�s Model Takes Some Evolution Out of Africa
By Vinny Reda
In the cover story of the July 30 issue of Current Biology magazine, University biologist Caro-Beth Stewart and NYU anthropologist Todd R. Disotell proposed a controversial new model for the evolution of apes and humans (together called hominoids).
Caro-Beth Stewart
The model argues that the ancestor of the living African apes and humans evolved in Eurasia, not Africa, a significant departure from the long-held view that the evolutionary history of the lineage leading to humans was confined to the African continent.
Today, both the lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs) and some great apes (orangutans) live in southeastern Asia, while other great apes (gorillas and chimpanzees) live in equatorial Africa. Thus, ancestors of these ape species have to have moved between the African and Eurasian land masses during evolutionary history. The fossil record indicates that apes were present in Europe and western Asia during the Miocene, from about 8 to 17 million years ago.
According to the theory traditionally held by most paleoanthropologists, the hominoids evolved in Africa and the lesser apes and orangutans dispersed out of Africa to Eurasia at different times, leaving representatives of the lineage leading to the gorillas, chimpanzees and humans in Africa.
Based on a synthetic analysis of molecular, fossil, and biogeographical data for the primates, the Stewart-Disotell paper, "Primate Evolution � In and Out of Africa," proposes instead that the lineage leading to the common ancestor of all living apes dispersed out of Africa about 20 million years ago (during the early Miocene) and then speciated into the greater and lesser ape lineages in Eurasia. Within the past 10 million years, say the authors, one of the great ape species dispersed back into Africa. This lineage eventually speciated into gorillas, chimpanzees and humans.
A similar theory was proposed more than 25 years ago by pioneering molecular anthropologist Vincent Sarich, but he lacked the rigorous analytic methodology necessary to prove it. Stewart and Disotell�s research is based on parsimony analysis. That is, the model that involves the fewest evolutionary events to explain the data is the most plausible. The technique � which was first developed by entomologists and has been used only recently by anthropologists � uses computer technology to analyze large sets of data and identify the most parsimonious evolutionary model.
Using parsimony analysis, Stewart and Disotell find it more likely that the common ancestor of the "great" apes (orangutans, African apes and humans) evolved in Asia rather than in Africa. The problem with the traditional model, say the researchers, is that it calls for at least six separate dispersal events out of Africa to account for all living and extinct hominoid species in Eurasia. Stewart and Disotell�s model, which requires only two hominoid migration events, is a more parsimonious model, and therefore, they assert, a more plausible one.
Stewart was a 1994 winner of the National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellow Award. Her research into the molecular basis for adaptive evolution of higher organisms has also been funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Disotell, an assistant professor of anthropology at NYU, is an NSF young investigator award winner who is studying the latest automated approaches to DNA sequencing and typing.
