Vol. 19, No. 23

March 9, 2000

Faculty honored for
excellence by national societies

Sonzalo R. Arce, electrical and computer engineering; Mohsen Badiey, marine studies; and David L. Mills, electrical and computer engineering; all have been honored in their respective fields by being named fellows by national societies. Gonzalo R. Arce Arce, acting chairperson of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) and was cited by the organization for his contributions to the theory and application of nonlinear signal processing. The IEEE, an association of electrical engineers, is one of the largest technical organizations in the world with more than 350,000 members in 150 countries. The organization is dedicated to creating, developing, integrating, sharing and applying knowledge about electrical and information technologies and sciences. Fewer than one in 1,000 members has been selected by the IEEE board of directors for the designation of fellow. The distinction is given only to those who have made an outstanding contribution to the electrical and electronics engineering profession. Arce’s research interests include statistical and nonlinear signal processing, multimedia security over networks, wireless communications, electronic imaging and display and signal processing for communications. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1982 and shortly after joined the faculty of the engineering college at UD. Arce was a fellow of the UD Center for Advanced Studies and received the National Science Foundation Research Initiation Award. He has held visiting professor appointments at the Unisys Corporate Research Center and the International Center for Signal and Image Processing Tampere University in Finland. Arce is a co-chairperson of the 2001 EUSIPCO/IEEE workshop on nonlinear signal and image processing. He has been on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions for Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on Imaging Processing and the Journal Optics Express. He also is a fellow and founding member of the Nonlinear Signal and Image Processing Board. Mohsen Badiey Mohsen Badiey, marine studies and an expert in the science of underwater sound, has been elected a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He received the honor for his “contributions to the understanding of the effect of sediment properties on shallow-water sound propagation.” Badiey is an associate professor in the College of Marine Studies, where he teaches graduate courses in ocean acoustics in the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering Program. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Badiey conducts research on topics ranging from the generation of seismic waves, to the development of new environmental monitoring technologies using underwater sound. Currently, in research supported by the UD Sea Grant College Program and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Badiey is exploring the use of Fourteen Foot Light, a lighthouse in the Delaware Bay, as a platform for gathering “real time” environmental data. This spring, acoustic sensors will be positioned underwater in the bay and attached by cable to computers stationed in the lighthouse. Once the system is up and running, data on acoustics, weather, tides and currents will be transmitted continuously from sea to shore. Since Badiey and his research team will be able to control the sensors from their laboratory, they will be able to monitor the environment for long periods, even during major storms, an impossibility with traditional shipboard monitoring techniques. Founded in 1929, the Acoustical Society of America is regarded as the premier international scientific society in acoustics, dedicated to increasing the knowledge of the science of sound and its practical applications. Its membership includes nearly 7,100 men and women from the United States and abroad in fields ranging from oceanography and physics, to speech and hearing. There are 800 fellows in the society. Badiey is one of 30 scientists who were awarded the honor during the past year. David L. Mills Mills, electrical and computer engineering, has been named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), cited for his “contributions to Internet routing and timekeeping.” ACM, founded in 1947, is the world’s first educational and scientific computing society with more than 80,000 members worldwide. The fellows program honors outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology. Mills, who received his Ph.D. in computer and communication sciences from the University of Michigan in 1971, began working on projects involving digital communication while still an engineering undergraduate student. In 1959, he helped design and build an advanced analog/digital high frequency radio direction finder for the U.S. Army. In 1964, he participated in the development of one of the first computer networks when he designed and supervised the construction of a device for attaching interactive terminals to an IBM mainframe. As senior research scientist for the COMSAT laboratories during the late 1970s, Mills directed and participated in the analysis, design and implementation of SatNet, the satellite network for the Defense Research Projects Agency. Later, he did the same for the infant Internet, which uses satellite, cable and telephones lines to link computers at the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) with computers at colleges and universities doing DOD research. Mills was one of the initial developers of the mathematical set of rules, called protocols, that allowed information to be transmitted between computers at long distances, paving the way for what has become the World Wide Web. In 1982, Mills became director of networks for the Linkabit Corp. where he helped develop the first Internet. He designed, wrote and implemented the specifications for the Exterior Gateway Protocol that became the prototype for protocols used today to send information packets between campus, regional and backbone networks. In 1986, when the National Science Foundation decided to build its own backbone network linking colleges, universities and research facilities doing all kinds of research, Mills became its principal architect and implementor. Mills joined UD’s engineering faculty in 1986. He teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in data communications, network protocols, applied cryptography, computer security, electronic circuit analysis, digital systems design and computer architecture. His research focuses on developing Internet timekeeping technologies that can keep pace with the phenomenal growth of the Internet. He was one of the initial developers of Internet timekeeping protocols that evolved into the Network Time Protocol (NTP) that is widely used by federal agencies and educational institutions. His most recent research involves developing technologies that will extend the accuracy, stability and reliability of timing protocols to microseconds within large fast networks. Precise timing affects all Internet transmissions, especially e-mail, e-commerce and time sensitive documents. Because of the explosive growth of the Internet, Mills wrote, “Management and configuration of this network has become almost unworkable.” His research is aimed at keeping time synchronization accurate, reliable, universal and secure. As an ACM Fellow, Mills is expected to serve as a guide and leader to ACM members as the world of information technology evolves. –Tracey Bryant and Barbara Garrison