Though he was born in the western part of China, Li Bai, PhD, was destined to teach engineering at Temple University.

At the age of eight Bai, ’96, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, moved when his father, Zhidong Bai, received his PhD and became a statistics professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, a city of nearly 5 million people 250 miles west of Shanghai. There the young Bai became infatuated with laser experiments being conducted by researchers at USTC, one of China’s foremost universities.

Then when he was 16 he moved to the United States when his father became a statistics professor at Temple University – where Bai entered the College of Engineering in the fall of 1993. “I didn’t want to go into statistics,” he recalls. “So my father, who originally wanted me to become a mathematician like him, told me: ‘Major in engineering. If you change your mind you can always come back to statistics’.”

Bai, whose father now teaches at the National University of Singapore, never wavered. “After I began studying engineering, I met a lot of wonderful professors who sent me on my career path,” says Bai, who graduated in three years with one of his class’s highest GPAs.

While earning his master’s and PhD degrees in electrical engineering at Drexel University, Bai was lauded for being the best EE teaching assistant. He then leapt at the chance to return to the same Temple department that had first nurtured him.

“I really enjoy teaching,” says Bai, who last year won a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, “and it felt natural to come back to a place where lots of professors mentored me about how to teach. It’s also where I kind of grew up and became an engineer.”

Many Temple students, says Bai, are both very bright and never shy with their suggestions for improving his classes or his research. “I think my Temple career really took off due to some of the very interesting ideas my students developed when they began working with me in 2004-05 on an electronic payment smart card for public transit systems,” he says.

Like most of Bai’s research, this commercial application grew out of basic research he has conducted since 2002 for various U.S. military clients. His computer fusion lab focuses on how to use computers to collect and make sense of growing streams of data – while assuring it is reliably and securely stored. Other potential commercial applications include his current research for an oil refinery analysis and control system.

Bai’s work also has implications for cloud computing – the new technology offered by Google, Amazon.com and others that allows you to remotely store and share data ranging from your vacation photos to highly sensitive information.

Temple, for example, uses Google’s Gmail system. “What if you have research data you want to store reliably in the cloud, but do not want others to steal it?” Bai wonders. “How you do that both reliably and securely presents fundamental research problems that we have to resolve.”

Bai’s lab also is collaborating with Luke Kahlich, PhD, dance professor, and dance students from the Boyer College of Music and Dance to develop works that take advantage of augmented reality. For example, they use their software skills to project still pictures on the bodies of moving dancers.

“Focusing on innovation and creativity is our lab’s top priority,” he says.

SIDEBAR: HYBRID SOLAR-WIND

(headline): Hybrid Solar-Wind to Power Campus Lighting and Security Cameras

If, on your next visit to the Temple campus, you notice light standards powered by both solar panels and small wind turbines, credit Li Bai, PhD, and his lab of graduate students. The hybrid, stand-alone lighting systems, which can also incorporate security cameras and Wi-Fi capabilities, are being piloted by Bai’s research team as a green, sustainable energy solution.

In a role reversal, the components were manufactured in and imported from China.

“In the past the U.S. made things that China and Japan tried to improve upon,” says Bai, who is collaborating on the pilot with Westinghouse Lighting Systems. “Now we’re trying to see if we can improve upon what China has made.”

Bai’s team is testing both the components and various types of new light bulb alternatives for both exterior and interior use. An exterior LED option, for example, uses just 60 watts to deliver the lighting equivalent of a 300-watt High Pressure Sodium (HPS) bulb – and should be maintenance free for 10 years.

They are also developing a mobile application that will allow university personnel to utilize the surveillance cameras and gauge the real-time efficiencies of each individual hybrid lighting unit. Bai’s students are also developing a mobile app that would allow anyone interested to check on how much energy each solar panel/turbine is currently producing in different seasons and weathers.

Says Michael Korostelev, ECE ’09, a second-year graduate student: “It’s a good way to raise awareness about sustainable technology.”