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Vanderbilt engineers lead world
forum on electronics-damaging radiation
Your iPod may be a fine example of technical wizardry, but it's no match for a
cosmic ray.
That's not a hypothetical problem or even peculiar to iPods. A random cosmic ray
can shut down a whole computer system if it hits just right, and even background
radiation can cause computer systems to falter.
Cosmic rays and other types of radiation from the sun, other stars-as well as
from ordinary items like the ground-are big problems to increasingly tiny
computer circuitry. Multiply that radiation-sensitivity many times over for
computer systems used in space, in equipment such as in satellites, on the space
shuttle, or in the International Space Station.
As might be expected, Vanderbilt engineers are on top of this problem. From July
17-21, more than 30 Vanderbilt faculty members, students, and engineers joined
scientists and engineers from all over the globe in Ponte Vedre Beach, Fla., in
examining possible solutions.
"The Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference is a focal point for
presenting the results of our research and getting new ideas for future work,"
said Ron Schrimpf, EECS Professor and Director of Vanderbilt's Institute for
Space and Defense Electronics. Schrimpf chaired the Steering Committee
responsible for supervising the NSREC.
It might not sound elementary, but "Modeling the Space Radiation Environment and
Effects on Microelectronic Devices and Circuits"
was the equivalent of Radiation Effects 101 for the conferees this year.
Vanderbilt's Robert Reed, research associate professor of electrical engineering
and computer science, helped introduce engineers new to the field through this
short course, presented the first day of the conference.
Reed's course helped engineers understand how radiation interacts with matter
and how engineers model the space environment to predict how radiation affects
integrated circuits. Reed formerly served as a research physicist at NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center.
He was assisted by Vanderbilt research engineers Jeffrey D. Black and W. Timothy
Holman, who explained how to perform computer simulations to analyze single
events (such as cosmic rays) in integrated circuits.
Vanderbilt Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Engineering Bharat Bhuva chaired one of the nine technical sessions at the
conference. His session was on "Hardness by Design," which examined ways to
design computer devices so that they are resilient to radiation and can recover
from radiation damage without losing functionality.
Throughout the conference, Vanderbilt engineers presented 20 of the
109 technical papers presented at the conference. They also participated in the
Radiation Effects Data Workshop.
Vanderbilt Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering Lloyd
Massengill will chair next year's conference, to be held July 23 - 27 in
Honolulu. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Chair of the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dan Fleetwood was installed as the
new Executive Vice Chairman of the Radiation Effects Steering Group that
oversees the conference.
ISDE is part of the Radiation-Effects Group at Vanderbilt, which is the largest
program of its kind in the U.S. and is the only academic program actively
involved in support of the U.S.
Department of Defense in analyzing radiation effects for strategic applications.
Contact:
Vivian Cooper,
(615) 343-6314
vivi.cooper@vanderbilt.edu
or
David F. Salisbury,
(615) 343-6803
david.f.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu
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