David Geer's GeerHead column offers a detailed look at Wei-Min Shen's "Polymorphic Robotics Lab, which is conducting research into self-reconfigurable, autonomous robots with capabilities derived in part from the study of insect and animal life."

"Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art," begins a 5000-word feature entitled "Robots That Care." The ending: "But robotic interaction should not replace human interaction," she said. "It should only improve it."

Hillis, a research professor of engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and co-chair of Applied Minds Inc, is the principal investigator for a $16 million effort to bring non-medical scientific expertise to bear on oncology.

Massoud Pirbazari discussed issues of potential toxin contamination ("It’s a general problem all over the country") with a reporter from the Glendale News-Press, saying area sources seemed safe.

Sophisticated warning systems are crucial, says Astani Department specialist Costas Synolakis in a WSJ opinion piece, but educating people in risk areas is equally important, and "the lesson that education saves lives has apparently been lost to emergency managers world-wide."

Introduced by Daniel J. Epstein Department Chair James E. Moore, the President of Olin College of Engineering delivers the 2009 installment of the annual series of talks honoring the memory of system architecting pioneer Eberhardt Rechtin

KTLA's Kurt the CyberGuy visits the USC Robotics Laboratory with Radha Mitchell, co-star of Surrogates, to talk about "the real life of robots."

Kristen Scudder is profiled and video-interviewed in the American Society For Engineering Education online and print publication eGFI, aimed at encouraging K-12 students to consider engineering as a career.

Los Angeles Daily News: "'We have created surges of water on Mondays and Thursdays, (and) that has created new demands on our system and increased stresses on our pipes,' said Jean-Pierre Bardet, chairman of the University of Southern California department of civil and environmental engineering, and director of USC's Center on Megacities."

The Hsieh Department professor's role in the Catalyst Workshop, a DOD-funded effort to train scientists and engineers as screenwriter/directors, is explored in an L.A. Times feature about the first film to come out of the program.

As part of what Integrated Media Systems Center Director James Baker calls the convergence of radio and the Internet, students will submit proposals for multimedia projects centered on classical music for USC's top-ranked music station.

“The mechanisms of life operate at the nanoscale,” says Aristides Requicha, director of the [Computer Science Department's] Laboratory for Molecular Robotics. “If we build devices at their scale, we will be able to interact intimately with them.”

P. Daniel Dapkus of the Hsieh Department and Professor of Chemistry Mark Thompson discuss the research plans for the Energy Frontiers Research Center for Emerging Materials for Solar Energy Conversion and Solid State Lighting, recently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy/ (Video)

AP reports: "An architect ... suggested the team get in touch with [the Viterbi School's] Behrokh Khoshnevis, who had developed a rapid prototyping technology that can be used to make walls. Khoshnevis agreed to work with the students as their chief technology officer."

In a 15-minute interview on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson, the AME professor discusses future fuels, vehicles, carbon dioxide limitation, wind power and much more, including strategies for effecting change. (podcast)

The New York Times article notes, "Alan E. Willner, an electrical engineer at the University of Southern California, is one of those academics (working with industry). He is an expert in photonics, using light photons instead of electrons to transmit information.”

"'The goal of the attack is to bring service down so clients cannot get to it,' said Jelena Mirkovic, a computer scientist at USC’s Information Services Institute.'It is very, very difficult to tell whether A certain client is a human client or an [Internet bot].'"

"'We’re responding to what we perceive are needs and demands,' said Dean Yannis Yortsos. 'We offer an immediate way for engineers out there to specialize in these new areas of economic growth.'"

"'Our results show how much the mechanics of the body, and a given task, affect what the brain can or can't do,' said Francisco Valero-Cuevas of the Brain-Body Dynamics Lab at the University of Southern California, who led the research."

William Swartout, a research professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School, has received the Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.