Portland, Ore.

The following employees at Oregon Health & Science University's OGI School of Science & Engineering, based in Hillsboro, Ore., recently received notable awards:

Wu-chang Feng, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the OGI School of Science & Engineering, recently co-wrote a paper that was selected as one of the four "Best IBM Research Papers in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Math" published in 2002. Feng and co-authors Kang Shin, Ph.D., University of Michigan professor; Dilip Kandlur, Ph.D., IBM researcher; and Debanjan Saha, Ph.D., IBM researcher, will share a $2,500 award for "The BLUE Active Queue Management Algorithms."

Tamara Hayes, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering and computer science and engineering in the OGI School of Science & Engineering, received a grant from the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon. The $29,867 grant is for a one-year study called "Modifications of the Speech Signal to Improve Speech Intelligibility." The study will investigate the role of tone variation and the temporal elements of speech, and the intelligibility of that speech in noisy environments. The study focuses on the elderly and hearing-impaired, populations who typically have more difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments. Such research ultimately may used to develop "smart" hearing aids that dynamically modify incoming speech sounds to improve intelligibility.

The OGI School of Science & Engineering (formerly the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science & Technology) became one of four specialty schools of Oregon Health & Science University in 2001. The school has more than 100 full-time and adjunct faculty, and more than 300 full-time master's and doctoral students who take accredited courses in five academic departments. There are more than 300 part-time master's and doctoral students who take not-for-credit courses, and an additional 1,000 working professionals who take classes through the school's Center for Professional Development.

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