Campus.News: Features

Researchers at Rensselaer have discovered a clever new use for ultra-thin molecular structures that could make computers and other microelectronic devices faster and more efficient.

Ganapathiraman Ramanath, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and his graduate students have, for the first time, successfully used self-assembled molecular layers (SAMs) as barriers to keep copper from diffusing into adjacent insulating layers inmicroelectronics devices. This advance, reported in the April 23 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could extend copper technology by allowing cheaper fabrication of smaller and more reliable interconnect structures with more than twice the interconnect speed than would otherwise be possible.

Copper, the preferred material for interconnecting devices in a chip, easily diffuses into insulation layers that separate multilevel metal wiring. To prevent diffusion, barrier layers separate the copper from the insulation. While conventional barriers such as tantalum nitride, which can range from 10-30 nanometers thick, are adequate for 180 nanometer structures, smaller device structures cannot have that much space devoted to the barrier, said Ramanath. His group has demonstrated that SAM layers as thin as 1.5 nanometers inhibit copper diffusion into silica.

"The advantage of SAMs is that, because of their size, they can be used with current copper technology as well as with future technologies such as carbon nanotube-based molecular electronics," said Ramanath.

The research is supported by funding from Ramanath's recent National Science Foundation CAREER award, IBM, and New York state.

Kenneth and Thelma Lally, longtime benefactors of Rensselaer, have given $100,000 to the Rensselaer Annual Fund to support such ongoing educational efforts as new curricula and academic programs, research, and scholarships. In recognition of their latest act of generosity, an etched window in the Troy Building honoring W. & L.E. Gurley (now Gurley Precision Instrument Co.) has been dedicated to the Lallys.

Kenneth Lally is credited with saving the century-old company in 1968, when he purchased Gurley and took control of its operations.

"For many years, Kenneth and Thelma Lally have been consistent and generous friends of Rensselaer. Their latest gift will bring us that much closer to our vision of a university where education, research, and entrepreneurship flourish at a world-class level," said President Jackson.

In 1995, the Lallys gave $15 million—at the time, the largest single gift to the university—to Rensselaer's School of Management to help it gain national prominence. In honor of their gift, the school was renamed the Kenneth T. and Thelma P. Lally School of Management and Technology.

Kenneth Lally has been a member of the Rensselaer Board of Trustees since 1970, and has served as secretary of the board since 1981. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Lally School of Management and Technology, and he and Thelma are members of the Stephen Van Rensselaer Society of Patroons. In 1995 Kenneth Lally Kenneth Lally received an honorary doctor of engineering degree.

The entire Rensselaer community is urged to attend final presentations in the international design competition for the proposed electronic media and performing arts building, on Thursday, June 14. Four architect finalists will present their visions for the building to a juried selection panel.

The building, which will be located on the hillside east of Eighth Street between the Folsom Library and the Materials Research Center, will improve the quality of campus life and give students better opportunities to express their creative interests, and engage the campus and surrounding community with electronic and performing arts.

Twelve architectural firms from around the world participated in the design competition. From those, the four finalists were selected. They will make their presentations in Room 308 of the Darrin Communications Center according to the following schedule:

President Jackson has named Robert Baron interim dean of the Lally School of Management and Technology, effective July 1.

Baron is the Dean R. Wellington '83 Professor of Management. He holds a master's and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Iowa, and a bachelor's degree from the City University of New York.

Baron, who is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and American Psychological Society, joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1987 and served as professor and chair of the department of psychology until 1991.

Baron previously held faculty positions at Purdue, the University of Texas, University of Minnesota, Oxford University, and Princeton.

Baron is the president of Innovative Environmental Products Inc., a company that designs and promotes equipment for improving indoor environments. He holds three U.S. patents, and has written or co-written 42 books, 32 chapters, and more than 100 articles.

Joseph Ecker, who is the Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Educator, has been dean of the Lally School since January 1998. He will return to teaching full-time as a professor in mathematics.

A national search is under way for dean of the Lally School. For more information on the search go to: www.lallymgmtdean.rpi.edu/.

Using some advanced, high-tech computer gear, Chris Csikszentmihályi, assistant professor of arts, is bringing the culture of disc jockeying to new "scratching" heights with his electronic "DJ, I Robot," the first random-access, fully analog robotic DJ system.

DJ, I Robot is a pair of turntables that plays itself, complete with cuts, scratches, beat juggling, and mixes. It has, like those chess-playing computers, even battled humans.

The art of scratching vinyl goes back to the days of hip-hop in the 1970s and still is popular in many metropolitan cities around the world, including New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. Human DJs use turntables much like musical instruments in that the vinyl records they use for their art are not really played, but samples are "scratched," or moved manually by hand to create different sounds and morphed beats.

The robotic DJ uses a PC, several microcontrollers, and an advanced "motion control" system to automatically mix, scratch, and search a pair of custom vinyl records on the robotic phonographs. Unlike its human counterparts who can spin the platters typically to 45 RPM, the machine can rake up speeds of up to 800 RPM.

The system was built by Csikszentmihályi and two of his students, computer science major Jonathan Girroir '02 and Jeremi Sudol, a computer science graduate student.

To see how his robot lives up to its human counterpart, Csikszentmihályi has taken his machine to compete against some of the best experts in the business, including Josh Gabriel, a top DJ in New York.

"Josh won and schooled us well," Csikszentmihályi says. "While the system has a level of precision and accuracy no human could rival, it still can't go to the thrift store and find that classic Roy Ayers song with a great drum break, or watch the crowd to see if they're getting a groove on. We haven't coded the algorithm for funk."

Csikszentmihályi's robot has already performed in Germany, New York, and most recently at the opening party for the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

Jacob Fish Elected Fellow of USACM

Thomas Griffin

Jacob Fish, professor of civil engineering and of mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, and mechanics, has been elected a fellow of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM). Fish was honored for his contributions to the field of computational mechanics.

Fish's work focuses on multiscale modeling and simulations of large-scale systems such as airplanes, cars, and the human body. Much of his work is interdisciplinary and is carried out with colleagues in math, physics, materials science, and other departments.

Fish received his bachelor's and his master's degrees from the Israel Institute of Technology in 1981 and 1986, respectively. Fish joined Rensselaer in 1989 upon completion of his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He received an NSF Young Investigator Award in 1992.

He is treasurer and president-elect of USACM, chair of the ASCE Computational Mechanics Committee, and is a member of the National Research Council for Air and Ground Vehicle Technology, editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Computational Civil and Structural Engineering, and associate editor of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

Researchers at Document Development Corporation, a Rensselaer Incubator company, have developed a man/machine system with artificial intelligence that can effectively collaborate with humans to automatically generate business documents.

Selmer Bringsjord, professor of logic and cognitive science and chief scientist for the Document Development Corporation, says the company's Intelligent Document Production (IDP) technology can drastically reduce the time and exorbitant cost of proposal and contract writing.

With clients that include some of the largest IT services companies in the world, the Incubator company expects to penetrate an industry estimated at $1.5 billion by 2005.

"Every Fortune 1000 company knows that documents drive business," said Bringsjord. "Be they policy updates, contracts, proposals, or warranties, every company is driven by a paper trail. But there's no need to reinvent the wheel every time you set out to create a new proposal."

Bringsjord and Dave Ferrucci, a scientist at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, were the brains behind BRUTUS a critically acclaimed "smart" machine system that uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate short stories.

IDP uses newly patented technological advances to provide an "intelligent" machine assistant that allows one person to draft huge documents quickly.

The IDP system retains and reuses customized, business-specific lingo. With each new addition or deletion made by a human, the machine system learns the new language, is made smarter, and incorporates the changes in all future documents.

Because the intelligent machine system is aware "in a mechanical sense" of its users' needs, Bringsjord says this type of human-machine accord results in finely tuned, more accurate documents.