In This Section:
Seeing The Difference
Right On Target

Teaching and learning through cultural contradictions

The meeting in war-torn Europe in 1946 between her counter-intelligence officer father and Austrian mother remains significant in the life of UConn associate professor of English Margaret Breen. That's because experiencing cultural differences early on taught her to see beyond surface meaning.

Students describe associate professor Margaret Breen as "down to earth" and always encouraging.

"When I think about the impossible happening of my parents falling in love directly after the war, I recognize how cultural contradictions are often the most fruitful way of discovering things," says Breen. Her fields of specialization are women's studies, gay and lesbian literature and theory, and 18th- and 19th-century British literature.

There's no irony that Breen is a member of the John Bunyan Society and also an expert on queer theory, the academic field that examines the interrelationship of power and gender.

A 17th-century Puritan minister, Bunyan authored The Pilgrim's Progress, a foundational text that sheds light on the middle class and women's issues. Queer theory appreciates that gender and sexuality are separate and fluid distinctions. "John Bunyan and queer theory are startlingly interconnected and make a wonderful combination," says Breen.

The popularity of a course she developed, "Genders, Sexualities, and Theories," offered at graduate and undergraduate levels, speaks, Breen says, to a strong student demand for intellectual critique of societal gender policing.

In addition to teaching at UConn's Avery Point and Storrs campuses, Breen has also been instrumental in supporting and promoting the Rainbow Center, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender resource center at UConn. "The Rainbow Center and the students it serves have benefited greatly from her strong leadership and participation," says Stephanie Marnin, the Center's director. In 2000, the Center honored Breen with its Community Service Award.

Both faculty and students agree: Breen is a wonderful asset to UConn. While colleagues describe Breen as "engaging, compassionate, and extraordinarily respectful of students," students are quick to note that she "promotes class interaction, is down-to-earth, and always offers encouragement."

Says Breen: "For me the teacher-student relationship is critical. It's as powerful as the bond between partners, parents and children, and spiritual leaders and followers."

"She has a way of making complex theory both comprehensible and practical and listens carefully to students," says Katie Peel '01 M.A., who has a graduate certificate in women's studies and is pursuing a Ph.D. in English.

In 2001, the UConn Chapter of the American Association of University Professors recognized Breen's excellence in the classroom with its annual Award for Teaching Promise.

Whether in Storrs, Avery Point or at the Rainbow Center, Breen considers teaching a sacred experience. She views the world through the beauty of text and the ongoing need for social justice.

-- Claudia Chamberlain

Bar-Shalom's algorithms track with extraordinary accuracy

The next time you catch a flight, your trip may owe something to Yaakov Bar-Shalom. A new generation of air traffic control systems is currently being instituted worldwide, and he has engineered the brain around which the systems have been built.

Professor Yaakov Bar-Shalom has developed the critical computer modeling behind a new generation of air traffic control systems.

Bar-Shalom, professor of electrical and computer engineering, develops sets of computer instructions, or algorithms, that keep track of moving objects, such as airplanes. His work is already being used in Boston by Logan Airport's air traffic monitoring system, by the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. and Israeli missile defense systems.

The difficulty with target tracking is that a computer does not instinctively recognize a moving object. The task, therefore, is to get computers to see connections between snapshots of data received from sensors such as radar.

Bar-Shalom begins by giving the computer a model of an object's motion, which will vary according to the tracking system's intended purpose. If the object has been moving in a straight line, the model predicts that it will continue to do so. So the computer predicts a path for each object and checks whether an object appears on that track in the next frame.

Planes, however, may suddenly change direction, and all radar systems exhibit some measurement error. "The motion of objects is not entirely predictable," Bar-Shalom says. "You have to account for the uncertainty of the motion and the uncertainty of the measurements." So the computer must be flexible.

Bar-Shalom has developed a way to tell a computer exactly how flexible it should be. He instructs the computer to make a "window" around the object's next predicted position. If the signal from the radar is slightly off-target, or if the object begins to turn, the object will remain inside the window and be recognized by the computer. If the object begins a turn, the computer will switch to another motion model.

Bar-Shalom's algorithms are also applied under other demanding circumstances--in Israeli and U.S. missile defense systems. Interceptor missiles approach their targets at up to ten times the speed of sound. "You've got to figure out how to process the information very fast," he says. His algorithms also drive an Australian radar system that keeps track of all sea and air traffic within a 2,500-mile radius.

Bar-Shalom, whose first name, coincidentally, in modern Hebrew means "he shall track," has published prolifically in the field of target tracking, authoring 110 journal papers and four books. He is president of the International Society of Information Fusion and is a frequent keynote speaker at major conferences in his field.

"Yaakov is the father of target tracking," says Peter Willett, professor of electrical and computer engineering. "He's one of the many people in whom this University and its community can take great pride."

-- Brent C. Evans '03 (CLAS)