Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel

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A Founding Father of the Internet, Drexel EE Alumnus Paul Baran Named National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Paul Baran, a founding father of the Internet and a Drexel University alumnus, has been named a 2007 National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureate.

President Bush presented the award to Baran on Monday, Sept. 29, in the East Room of the White House.

The award honors America's leading innovators and is presented to individuals, teams and companies for their contributions to the nation's economic, environmental and social well-being.

"On behalf of the entire Drexel University community, I congratulate Paul Baran for his remarkable achievements," Drexel President Constantine Papadakis said. "One of the Internet's premier architects, he helped revolutionize the way we communicate, conduct business, teach and learn and so much more. He is one of Drexel's most accomplished alumni, and he has made us all proud."

A native of Poland who graduated from Drexel with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering in 1949 and received an honorary degree in 1997, Baran is credited with helping to develop packet-switching technology in 1962. Packet-switching enables information to be divided into small packets that are addressed, sent to several destinations to increase the odds the information will actually arrive and, finally, reassembled. Packet-switching laid the foundation for the Internet to develop.

While working at RAND Corp., Baran conceived of packet-switching as a military communications system to be used in the event of nuclear attack during the Cold War. A series of papers outlining the key concepts of packet-switching published in 1964, "On Distributed Communications" influenced the work of Lawrence Roberts and Leonard Kleinrock, a 2007 National Medal of Science laureate. Roberts and Kleinrock utilized packet-switching in the development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, the world's first operational packet-switching network and predecessor of the Internet.

Baran, an Atherton, Calif., resident who received the 2001 Franklin Institute Bower Award for Achievement in Science for his contributions to the Internet, is credited with helping to develop a packet voice technology that led to the development of the first commercial ATM product. He is also credited with helping to develop discrete multitone modem technology, used in DSL modems, and doorway metal detectors.

Another Drexel alumnus, N. Joseph Woodland, is a National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureate for his conception and development of Universal Product Code technology. Woodland, who graduated with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering in 1947 and received a Drexel honorary degree in 1998, was presented the award in 1992.

Wireless Laboratory Receives a Donation from Aeroflex, Inc.

Aeroflex, Inc. recently donated approximately $800,000 in specialized wireless communications protocol conformance testing and software defined radio equipment to the Drexel Wireless Systems Laboratory (DWSL) directed by Professor Kapil Dandekar in the ECE department. The donation was initiated by Drexel alum of the Class of 1983, and Aeroflex VP and General Manager, Robert Vogel (pictured at the right with Dean Guceri at the 2007 Engineer of the Year Banquet). The Aeroflex equipment, coupled with the anechoic chamber testing facility and other capital equipment in DWSL, will enable many new and exciting research projects and educational opportunities. The Aeroflex equipment also provides unique capabilities to Drexel which will allow it to become a research and educational leader in the area of wireless communication system development and testing.

New Financial Engineering Courses

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is pleased to announce a new year-long Special Topics series of courses in Financial Engineering.  This series of courses is designed to: prepare students to be competitive applicants for jobs in the financial sector; help students apply math and programming skills to a new, quickly growing area; and give students the skills to make more informed decisions in their personal management of money and investments.  The first course in the series will be offered this Fall Quarter and will cover time-value of money, portfolio management and the Capital Asset Pricing Model.

In the Winter and Spring terms, we will cover derivative securities, option pricing, betting strategies, auctions, financial time-series analysis, heavy-tailed distributions and parameter estimation.

The first course will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30 to 1:50 during the coming Fall Quarter.  The prerequisites for the course are ENGR 361: Probability and Statistics for Engineers and ECE 203: Programming for Engineers.  If you did not take these courses but believe that you have studied the same material in other courses, please ask for permission to enroll of the instructor, Dr. Steven Weber, at sweber@ece.drexel.edu.

All courses in this sequence can be counted towards fulfillment of core or technical elective requirements.

Register for the Fall term course, ECES 490, under the CRN 15151.

Direct questions to the course instructor, Dr. Steven Weber, at sweber@ece.drexel.edu.
(Photo: Jaap Steinvoorte )