Date: 06/20/2005

Electrical Engineering Professor Essam Marouf, who is the principal investigator on the Cassini Mission to Saturn, is continuing his work on the mission by conducting radio occultation experiments this summer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Marouf reports that three of the eight experiments have been completed, with the rest occurring every 20 days until September 5. The Cassini spacecraft has obtained the most detailed look ever at Saturn's rings, including the B ring, which has eluded previous robotic explorers. Contact Marouf at emarouf@email.sjsu.edu.

Harvey Gotliffe, professor of journalism and mass communication, recently spoke to 50 survivors of the Holocaust and former internees of Japanese-American internment camps at a gathering in San José's Japantown. Gotliffe, who coordinated the program with the South Bay Holocaust Survivors Group, teaches a course that examines American media coverage during World War II of both the internment camps for Japanese Americans and the Holocaust concentration camps. Contact Gotliffe at hgotliffe@casa.sjsu.edu.

Michael Solt, professor of accounting and finance, and Anu Basu, associate professor of organization and management and director of the Silicon Valley Center for Entrepreneurship, have organized the 3rd annual Silicon Valley Business Plan Competition, which will take place on Friday, June 24, in BBC 104, beginning at 9 a.m. Each of seven SJSU business undergraduate and graduate student teams, which have been selected for the final round in the competition, will present their plans to a panel of judges. The plans are for companies that produce products, including: an electronic device for college students for reading books and taking notes; a notebook computer to harness unused family computing resources; an indoor soccer complex; and a dual-edged snowboard via patent-pending technology. The business plan competition encourages innovation on the SJSU campus and rewards student participation in new ventures, says Solt. Contact him at solt_m@cob.sjsu.edu.