DISCOVER HONOR: The Human Interface Technology (HIT) Laboratory has received the 1998 Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation in the sight category. The award cites Thomas A. Furness III, director of the HIT Lab as one of the key innovators of a virtual retinal display technology, which is featured in the July 1998 awards issue of the magazine.

Developed under a contract between the UW and a Seattle corporation, Microvision,. The virtual retinal display scans a low-power beam of light that “paints” an image directly onto a user’s retina rather than a screen. Three laser sources (red, green and blue) are combined to provide a full-color scale. It has applications ranging from high-end military use to aids for people with low vision.

The Discover Awards recognize talented “men and women whose contribution to technological innovation improves the quality of everyday life and alerts us to what ‘s next on the frontiers of human achievement and ingenuity.”

STUDENT RESEARCHERS: Three UW students were winners in the poster competition at a conference sponsored by the Applied Surface Science Division of the American Vacuum Society and the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the AVS. The winners were: first place, Huaiqiu (Galen) Shi, bioengineering, Buddy Ratner (advisor), “Template Imprinted Nanostructural Surface for Biorecognition”; first runner-up, Brett Schroeder, physics, Marjorie Olmstead (advisor), “Effect of Surface Interactions on Band Offsets at Buried Semiconductor-Insulator Interfaces”; second runner-up, Daniel Graham, bioengineering, Buddy Ratner (advisor), “Principal Component Analysis of Self Assembled Monolayer Formation Kinetic.” Shi also is the recipient of an AVS Graduate Research Award.

KUDOS: Fisheries Professor Don Gunderson was named to the board of directors of the Pacific Marine Conservation Council in Astoria, Ore. . . . Economics Professor Kar-yiu Wong is in Hong Kong this month giving a workshop on the Asian financial crisis and Asian growth at the City University of Hong Kong. ¶

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