NASA, CSUN TEAMING UP STUDENTS WILL LOOK FOR WAYS TO PROTECT COMPUTERS IN SPACE.

Byline: Erik Nelson Staff Writer

NORTHRIDGE - After notable technical failures of its Mars probes, NASA has turned to Cal State Northridge to help keep its computer equipment safe in space - and hopefully out of Jay Leno's monologues.

Under a $2 million, four-year grant, 12 students will study how computer microchips react to cosmic extremes of temperature and radiation and attempt to find ways to make the silicon and gallium arsenide wafers more resistant to failure.

``This is real research, investigating real problems,'' said Behzad Bavarian, an engineering professor and the program's principal investigator.

Students will also have opportunities to intern at JPL and other institutions

acting as partners with CSUN, such as the prestigious Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

One student, Jose Colon of North Hollywood, has already done an internship at Carnegie-Mellon and now is one of the NASA program's fellows.

``I would like to have a better education in materials science,'' said the 23-year-old junior, adding that his fellowship could help him to decide what kind of graduate work to pursue in two years.

``In a lot of courses, they give you theory and practice, but here you get a lot of practical experience,'' said fellow Delaram Gidanian, a 23-year-old senior who lives in West Los Angeles. ``You see real-world problems here.''

Bavarian oversees the project along with California State University, Northridge, physics professors Ruqian Wu and Nicholas Kioussis.

The thrust of the program is to lure more minorities into scientific fields related to the work done by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, explained Bettie White, director of NASA's Minority University Research and Education Division.

By funding research at CSUN, White said, its students will have ``exposure and involvement in NASA-related research just as other students from major research institutions do.''

CSUN was chosen in part because it is designated a minority campus by the U.S. Department of Education. The university serves a large Latino population.

Bavarian's materials lab includes a scanning electron microscope, which allows students to look at gaps between conductors, thin wires comprising microchips that can short-circuit and cause failure.

The lab also features an even more powerful device that permits students to examine small groups of atoms to analyze how a material's atomic structure changes when it is subjected to cosmic forces.

While they can produce extreme heat and cold at the CSUN lab, they can't irradiate their microprocessors. To test their chips for that, students will use laboratory equipment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

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(color) CSUN professor Behzad Bavarian and students Daniel Omoto, 21, Lisa Reiner, 32, and Delaram Gidanian, 23, will be taking part in a NASA program to help protect computers in space.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer