Faculty News
Research:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent #8,875,485 on November 4 to Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE), Alex Shashurin and TaiSen Zhuang for “Micro-cathode thruster and a method of increasing thrust output for a micro-cathode thruster.”
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science gave Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) a three-year, $4.3 million grant to develop an increased understanding of the role of plasma in the synthesis of nanoparticles. Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) and GW received $180,000 of the funding to develop diagnostics for nanoparticle synthesis.
Media Mentions:
On November 5, Elevation dc published the article “ Student-run startup takes finalist prize at southeast region’s CleanTech Open ” about BitGrid, the energy start-up co-founded by Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE). BitGrid won $20,000 in cash and in-kind services in the regional competition and it now advances to the finals, which will be held November 12 and 13 in San Francisco, CA.
Publications:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) and his doctoral student William Rone have published the following peer-reviewed journal paper: W. Rone and P. Ben-Tzvi. “ Mechanics Modeling of Multi-Segment Rod-Driven Continuum Robots ,” Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, Transactions of the ASME, Vol. 6, Issue 4, pp. 041006: 1–12, November 2014.
Prof. Kie Eom (ECE) has published the following journal paper jointly with Prof. Peng Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: P. Liu and K. Eom. “Compressive Sensing of Noisy Multispectral Images," IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 11, 2014, pp. 1931 - 1935, DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2014.2314177
Detecting and Combatting Malicious Email , a new book by Prof. Julie Ryan (EMSE), was published on October 10. The book is co-authored with Cade Kamachi, who recently finished her graduate studies at Idaho State University. This book, which is written for the ordinary person, explains how to think about and identify malicious email, steps to take to protect oneself from harm, and how to craft management strategies for an organization to reduce the risk from malicious email. The book is published by Syngress, an imprint of Elsevier.
Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE) and his graduate student Shirshendu Paul published the following collaborative article: R. Nahire, M. Halder, S. Paul, A. Margoum, A.H. Ambre, K.S. Katti, K.N. Gange, D.K. Srivastava, K. Sarkar, and S. Mallik (2014). “Lipid nanoparticles with tunable echogenicity for targeted delivery to pancreatic cancer cells with simultaneous ultrasound imaging,” Molecular Pharamaceutics, 11, 4059-4068.
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Sameh Badie (CEE) presented the paper “Monitoring of the 205-ft Precast Girders of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, WA” at the ACI Fall Convention, held October 26-30 in Washington, DC. His graduate student Yu Jiang is a co-author of the paper. The paper was presented in a series of sessions titled “Sustainable Performance of Concrete Bridges and Elements Subject to Aggressive Environments: Monitoring, Evaluation, and Rehabilitation.”
Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) was an invited speaker at the UMD/NVIDIA CUDA Center for Excellence GPU Summit 2014, held October 27 at the University of Maryland, College Park.
On November 18–19, Prof. Lorena Barba (MAE) will be a featured speaker at the Open edX Conference in Cambridge, MA. The event will be live-streamed. Open edX is the software platform that powers edX, the MIT/Harvard-founded non-profit that offers free online courses to the world. Prof. Barba led the project to install this open-source platform within SEAS to launch GW’s first massive open online course (MOOC). In advance of the conference, Prof. Barba was interviewed for a spotlight in the edX engineering blog.
South Africa’s Council of Industrial and Scientific Research (CSIR) invited Prof. Ashraf Imam (MAE research professor) to give a plenary talk at the AMI (Advanced Metals Initiative) Light Metals Conference 2014. The conference was organized by CSIR and held October 15-17 at Kwa Maritane, Pilanesberg National Park, Rustenburg, South Africa. Prof. Imam’s talk was titled “Processing of Titanium and its Alloys by Microwave Energy.”
Prof. James Lee (MAE) gave two invited seminars during a recent trip to Taiwan: 1) “Recent Progresses in Fracture Mechanics and Biomechanics,” delivered October 21 at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University (Tainan, Taiwan); and 2) “Multiscale Modeling of Multi-physics: from Atom to Continuum,” delivered October 23 at the Institute of Applied Mechanics, National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan).
Other News
Prof. Ben-Tzvi (MAE) has been notified by InTech Publisher that his book chapter, “A Mechatronic Perspective on Robotic Arms and End-Effectors,” in the book Intelligent Mechatronics has been downloaded more than 6,000 times, as of October 2014. According to the publisher, the top downloads of the book chapter were from the United States, India, China, Germany, and Japan. Intelligent Mechatronics was published by InTech Open Access Publisher, February 2011, pp. 3-20 (ISBN-13: 978-953-307-300-2). Prof. Ben-Tzvi's book chapter was co-authored with his former doctoral student Paul Moubarak.
Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) is organizing an International Symposium of High-order Methods for Computational Fluid Dynamics as part of the 13th U.S. National Congress of Computational Mechanics (USNCCM), to be held in July 2015 in San Diego, CA. In 2013, he organized a similar symposium in Raleigh, NC, and edited a special issue for Computers & Fluids, an international journal.
Student News
Prizes announced for the 2015 SEAS Student R&D Showcase:
The Showcase is open to all SEAS undergraduate and graduate students, and this year it includes a new selection of prize categories:
- Theoretical Research: 1st Place - $5,000; 2nd Place - $4,000; 3rd Place - $3,000
- Experimental Research: 1st Place - $5,000; 2nd Place - $4,000; 3rd Place - $3,000
- Undergraduate Research: $2,000
- Entrepreneurship: $2,000
(Winning mentors receive $1,000 toward their R-Funds)
The deadline to apply to the Showcase has been extended to November 14, 2014. To be eligible to compete in the Showcase, students must submit their two-page abstracts by 5:00 pm on November 14. More information for student participants is available on the SEAS website's R&D Showcase Student Participants page.
Undergraduates Alexa Baumer (MAE) and Andrea Lehn (BME), both of whom work with Prof. Megan Leftwich (MAE), presented the following poster at the Biomedical Engineering Society 2014 Annual Meeting, held October 22-25 in San Antonio, TX: A. Baumer, A. Lehn, J. Grotberg and M.C. Leftwich (2014). “An Experimental and Theoretical Model of Simplified Childbirth.”
The GW Institute for Biomedical Engineering is pleased to announce the winners of the 2014-2015 Undergraduate Research Fellowship:
- Priyanka Wadgaonkar (Biology) and Zainab Mahmood (BME) . “A proportionally scaled human torso model for electrophysiology studies using rabbit hearts,” Faculty Advisor: Prof. Matthew Kay (BME)
- Caitlin Carroll (BME) and William Murphy (BME) . “3-D Computational Model of Tumor Evolution in Response to CAP Treatment on a Scale of mm-cm,” Faculty Advisor: Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE)
Guest Vignette
The research interests of Prof. Hernan Abeledo are mainly focused on the application of mathematical optimization techniques to decision problems that arise in health care and medicine. For example, an emergency department typically prepares a staffing schedule for its physicians that spans several months. Producing these schedules is a computationally complex task that involves accounting for various rules and constraints such as rest periods between consecutive shifts for each physician, special rules for night shifts and weekends, seniority exceptions, and fairness of schedules, as well as the individual preferences, availability, and contracted hours for each physician. Prof. Abeledo’s research addresses the scheduling of emergency physicians, as well as other scheduling problems concerning doctors and patients. Collaborators in this research include physicians from the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences and doctoral and undergraduate students from the EMSE department. The research team currently is working on improving scheduling methodologies at GW and at the Whitman-Walker Health Center. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Hernan Abeledo, Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering)
SEAS Events
MAE Seminar: “Integrating Cellular Mechanobiology and Biomechanics and the Emergence of Primary Cilia as Mechanosensors”
Speaker: Dr. Christopher R. Jacobs, Columbia University
Tuesday, November 11
10:30 am
736 Phillips Hall
CS Colloquium: “Compiler Technology: Are We Done Yet?”
Speaker: Dr. David Padua, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Thursday, November 13
10:00 am
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Mechanics in Action: From Nano to Continuum”
Speaker: Prof. Ken Chong (SEAS MAE)
Thursday, November 13
3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
CEE Seminar: “Nanotwinned Materials: Weird Kinks and Strength at the Nanoscale”
Speaker: Dr. Frederic Sansoz, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Vermont
Monday, November 24
3:00 – 4:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
SEAS Career Services Events
Google Hangout
Monday, November 10
6:30 pm
302 Marvin Center
Want to hear the latest and greatest from Google? Want to learn more about the culture and opportunities at Google? If so, we'd love to see you at our upcoming HangOutreach event. Come hear Google engineer, Zlata Barshteyn, give a presentation over Hangouts on the ideal timeline for your technical development, culture at Google, and current opportunities. Check out our job opportunities, scholarships and programs at www.google.com/careers/ students , or reach out to us with questions at [email protected] .
Entrepreneurship Events
Lean Startup Workshop Series
Monday, November 10 and Monday, November 17
5:30 – 7:00 pm
536 Marvin Center
RSVP
Two workshops remain in the Lean Startup Workshop (LSW) series .
GW Student-Mentor Match Event
Tuesday, November 11
5:30 – 7:30 pm
Alumni House, 1918 F St NW
Attention GW Students: Join us for an evening of networking with fellow GW student entrepreneurs and mentor-matchmaking with business professionals, industry experts, and successful entrepreneurs. This event is a great opportunity to make new connections, spark new partnerships, and find mentors who can help you take your business venture ideas from concept to reality + Complimentary reception and happy hour.
Writing a Compelling Executive Summary
Wednesday, November 12
451 Duquès Hall
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Baylor New Venture Competition Entry Deadline
Apply by November 14
The 4th annual Baylor New Venture Competition is open to graduate and undergraduate students, from all majors and universities. Compete for $130,000 in cash and prizes for the top 12 teams. Plus, receive up to $1,500 in travel funds, expert mentorship, feedback, and coaching throughout - an outstanding educational opportunity!
Collegiate Inventors Competition Expo and Awards
Monday, November 17
Expo: 8:00 – 9:30 am; 3:30 – 5:00 pm
Awards: 5:00 pm
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Madison Building Auditorium
600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA
Startup Grind Hosts Nick Lavezzo (FoundationDB)
Thursday, November 20
6:00 – 9:00 pm
Nick Lavezzo is cofounder and COO of FoundationDB, an industrial strength NoSQL database with a data model similar to Google’s Spanner and F1 projects (which run AdWords). FoundationDB is the only DC startup that is angel funded by the famous Ron Conway’s SV Angel fund. Lavezzo will discuss fundraising, marketing developer oriented products, building a community using social media, getting press attention, solving “impossible” problems and DCTech .