Faculty News
Publications:
Prof. Vesna Zderic (BME) is a co-author—together with her collaborators from the Food and Drug Administration—of the following paper: P. Hariharan, M. Nabili, A. Guan, V. Zderic and M. Myers. “Model for Porosity Changes Occurring during Ultrasound-Enhanced Transcorneal Drug Delivery,” Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology. March 20, 2017. doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.01.013. [Epub ahead of print]
Dr. Haidong Zhang (research scientist, MAE) has published the following paper: H. Zhang, H. Liu, K. Wei, O. O. Kurakevych, Y. Le Godec, Z. Liu, J. Martin, M. Guerrette, G. S. Nolas and T. A. Strobel. “BC8 Silicon (Si-III) is a Narrow-Gap Semiconductor,” Physical Review Letters, April 7, 2017. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118. 146601.
Conferences & Presentations:
On April 4, Prof. Ken Chong (MAE) gave a seminar at the Department of Mechanical and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh. The topic was new developments in smart materials and structures. He also visited with graduate students and faculty members and toured the school’s state-of-the-art facilities and labs.
Prof. Ahmed Louri (ECE) and his research team presented a paper titled “Machine Learning Enabled Power-Aware Network-on-Chip Design” at Design Automation and Test Europe (DATE 2017), held March 27-31, in Lausanne, Switzerland. DATE is one of the premier conferences on computer design, with an acceptance rate of 20 percent. The paper by Prof. Louri’s team tackles one of the major challenges for designing future computer systems, namely excessive power consumption. The research team exploits advances in machine learning algorithms to predict power consumption in such a way that power savings and performance are maximized. The research presented in the paper is funded by a grant from NSF.
On March 20, Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE) delivered the talk “Orthogonal ‘Physics Enabled Nanophotonics’” at a Naval Research Laboratory seminar. On March 28, he delivered an invited talk at the AIM Photonics Spring Meeting, which was held at MIT. The title of his talk was “Scaling Vectors of Electro-Optic Modulators.”
Other News:
Prof. Rachelle Heller (CS) has received a nearly $100,000 grant from the National Security Agency to direct a summer cybersecurity camp on the Mt. Vernon Campus. The purpose of the summer camp is to help students understand correct and safe on-line behavior, and to increase diversity and interest in cybersecurity. GW’s camp will be held June 19-30 and is open to middle school girls. This is the second such camp directed by Prof. Heller, who uses the resources of GW, SEAS, and Washington, DC during the camp to continue to bring women into STEM. Prof. Heller states that the middle school years are a great age to encourage young women to consider a career in technology.
Student News
Doctoral student Ivan Suarez Castellanos, advised by Prof. Vesna Zderic (BME), is the first author on this recently published paper: I. Suarez Castellanos, A. Jeremic, J. Cohen and V. Zderic. “Ultrasound Stimulation of Insulin Release from Pancreatic Beta Cells as a Potential Novel Treatment for Type 2 Diabetes,” Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology. March 24, 2017. doi: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017. 01.007. [Epub ahead of print]
Doctoral student Zhizhen Ma has won a travel grant from the National Science Foundation to attend a conference on 2D materials, which will be held in May at the University of Minnesota. Zhizhen works in Prof. Volker Sorger's (ECE) OPEN laboratory.
GW’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Student Chapter participated in the ASCE Virginias Conference, held March 30 – April 1 at Old Dominion University. The chapter received the Marr Technical Paper Second Place Award (received by Edna Aguilar for her paper “Flu Propagation as a Function of Transit Ridership in a City Environment: Statistical Analysis and Modeling”) and the Hardy Cross Third Place Award (received by Khalid Al-Sadhan for his presentation “Graphitic Carbon Nitride and Titanium Dioxide Nanocomposite Material and its Role in Pollutant Degradation”).
Congratulations to our SEAS student winners of last week’s GW Research Days Competition:
Engineering (Undergraduate):
- 1st Place: Scott Barnes: “Predictive Collaborative Robots via Deep Reinforcement Learning” (Mentor: Prof. Adam Wickenheiser, MAE)
- 2nd Place: Natalie Rozman, Annette Browne, and Konstantinos Koumousidis: “Optimization of Thermal Sintering Parameters of Silver Nanoparticle Ink” (Mentor: Prof. Saniya LeBlanc, MAE)
Computational and Environmental Science (Graduate):
- 1st Place: Shuai Sun: “Hybrid Photonic Plasmonic Interconnect (HyPPI): Tracing Moore's Law in a CLEAR Way” (Mentor: Prof. Volker Sorger, ECE)
- 2nd Place: Elizabeth Manning: “The Role of Viscosity in Anaerobic Digestion” (Mentor: Prof. Rumana Riffat, MAE)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering:
- 1st Place: Shankar Kulumani: “Spacecraft Trajectory Design Near Asteroid 4769 Castalia” (Mentor: Prof. Taeyoung Lee, MAE)
- 2nd Place: Jenna Osborn and Mitra Aliabouzar: “Effects of Ultrasound in Presence of Microbubbles for Cartilage and Bone Tissue Regeneration in 3D Printed Scaffolds” (Mentor: Prof. Kausik Sarkar, MAE)
Biomedical Engineering (Undergraduate):
- 1st Place (Tie): Alina Kline-Schoder: “Ultrasound-enhanced Drug Delivery for Treatment of Onychomycosis" (Mentor: Prof. Vesna Zderic, BME)
- 1st Place (Tie): Tania Singh: “Low-Frequency, Low-Intensity Ultrasound as a Potential Treatment for Type 2 Diabetes” (Mentor: Prof. Vesna Zderic, BME)
Biomedical Engineering (Graduate):
- 1st Place (Tie): Rachael Bevill: “Motion Learning for Emotional Interaction and Imitation of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” (Mentor: Prof. Chung Hyuk Park, BME)
- 1st Place (Tie): Ivan Suarez Castellanos: “Ultrasound Stimulation of Insulin Release from Pancreatic Beta Cells as a Potential Novel Treatment for Type 2 Diabetes” (Mentor: Prof. Vesna Zderic, BME)
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Prizes:
- Scott Downen, “Robot Therapist for Assisting in At-Home Rehabilitation of Shoulder Surgery Patients” (Mentor: Prof. Chung Hyuk Park, BME)
- Hifza Javed, “A Robotic Framework to Overcome Sensory Overload in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study” (Mentor: Prof. Chung Hyuk Park, BME)
- Aleksandra Klimas, “Automated High-Throughput All-Optical Dynamic Cardiac Electrophysiology for Drug Testing and Disease Modeling Using hiPSC-CMs” (Mentor: Prof. Emilia Entcheva, BME)
- Hani Nejadriahi, “Integrated All Optical Fast Fourier Transform (OFFT) On Chip with Heating Tunability- Design and Simulation Analysis” (Mentor: Prof. Volker Sorger, ECE)
- Jenna Osborn and Mitra Aliabouzar, “Effects of Ultrasound in Presence of Microbubbles for Cartilage and Bone Tissue Regeneration in 3D Printed Scaffolds” (Mentor: Prof. Kausik Sarkar, MAE)
Sustainability Prize (Undergraduate, Sustainable Energy and Environment):
- Joseph Schiarizzi, “Raspberry Pi Cluster Load Balancer to Conserve Electricity in Server Farms”
After last week’s semi-finals round of GW’s New Ventures Competition, 12 teams advanced to the final round, to be held on April 20. Five of the 12 teams are led by, or include, SEAS students. Congratulations to our SEAS student finalists:
- Natalia Clementi and Nikolaos Beratlis (SEAS alumnus) for “Bernik”
- Liran Cohen for “Givebutter”
- Connor Roberts for “Opal: Medical Equipment Management Device”
- Joseph Schiarizzi for “4th Wave Studios”
- Connor Varley for “KnoNap”
SEAS Computing Facility News
Raspberry Pi workshops: SEAS Computing Facility (SEAS CF), in collaboration with GW’s ACM student chapter, will hold a series of Raspberry Pi workshops in April. The workshops will cover introductions, programing, Internet of Things integration, and end with group projects. No programming experience is required, and all works will be performed in groups. All necessary equipment will be provided by SEAS CF. All workshops will be held in Tompkins 201 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm. The remaining workshops include:
April 15: Workshop 3—Introduction to Cayenne, Internet of Things
Controlling triggers, LEDs, cameras, outputs, and actions without programming
April 22: Workshop 4—Group Projects
Home network attached storage, security system, firewall, and more!
Please register or email [email protected] with any questions or comments.
SEAS Events
BME Seminar: “Socially Interactive Robots for Pediatric Therapy”
Speaker: Dr. Ayanna Howard, Georgia Institute of Technology
Monday, April 10
4:00 – 5:00 pm
SEH, B1220
CEE Colloquium: “Beyond Emerging Contaminants: Bioactive Transformation Products and What to Do about Them”
Speaker: Dr. David Cwiertny, University of Iowa
Friday, April 14
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
SEH, B1270
ECE Research Blitz
Friday, April 14
2:00 – 3:00 pm
SEH, 2000
ECE will hold a Research Blitz on April 14 to showcase the work of three ECE students: Paw Paw (advised by Prof. Milos Doroslovacki) will present “Deep Learning Based Learning Schemes for Modulation Identification and Cognitive Radio Systems;” Zhehan Yi (advised by Prof. Amir Etemadi) will present “Control and Power Management System (CAPMS) for Grid-Connected Solar PV-Battery Based Hybrid Microgrids;” and Shuai Sun (advised by Prof. Sorger) will present “HyPPI: The New Path of Moore's Law in CLEAR Light.”
2017 Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture: “Human Exploration from Inner to Outer Space”
Speaker: Dr. Dava Newman, aerospace engineer, professor, and former Deputy Administrator of NASA
Monday, April 17
6:30 – 8:30 pm
SEH, Lehman Auditorium
Register
ECE Talk: “Exploiting and Mitigating Timing Channels in Microprocessors”
Speaker: Dr. Dmitry Ponomarev, SUNY Binghamton
Friday, April 21
3:00 – 4:00 pm
SEH, B1270
ECE Distinguished Lecture Series: “Resource Management for Energy-Constrained Computing Systems”
Speaker: Dr. H.J. Siegel, Colorado State University
Wednesday, April 26
1:00 – 2:00 pm
SEH, B1220
Traffic and Granular Flow Conference (TGF17)
Wednesday – Saturday, July 19-22
TGF17 will be hosted at GW and chaired by Prof. Samer Hamdar (CEE). The conference is interdisciplinary, and faculty from all SEAS departments may submit abstracts. The deadline for abstract submission is March 30. Authors of approved abstracts will have the opportunity to submit a manuscript that will be published as a book chapter by Elsevier. Selected manuscripts will be submitted to be published in a special issue of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, of which Prof. Hamdar is the special issue editor. All details of the conference can be found on the conference website.
Carreer Center Events
Spring 2017 SEAS Undergraduate Career Development
Walk-in hours (no appointment needed): Wednesdays & Thursdays 5:00 – 7:00 pm
And by appointment
SEH, 1630
Entrepreneurship Events
TCO 2017 Innovation Competition
Wednesday, April 12
1:00 – 5:30 pm
SEH, B1220
Registration
The GW Technology Commercialization Office is showcasing promising and impactful GW research with commercial potential. This event provides a forum for idea sharing between GW researchers, entrepreneurs, and members of the venture community. Finalists will pitch their technologies for a chance to win $30,000 in prizes for the development of a prototype or proof-of-concept! All are welcome to attend. Registration for competition entries is now closed.
2017 GW New Venture Competition Finals
Thursday, April 20
5:30 – 8:30 pm (Reception to Follow)
MPA Building, Jack Morton Auditorium
Register
Cheer on the SEAS student teams competing in the Finals Round of the 2017 GW New Venture Competition and find out who will win the 1st Place prize! The 12 finalists have battled it out through a grueling three months to make it to this point. Don't miss out!
2017 Distinguished Entrepreneurial Achievement Award
Thursday, April 20
Media & Public Affairs Building, Jack Morton Auditorium
Register
GW will award the 2017 Distinguished Entrepreneurial Achievement Award (DEAA) to SEAS alumni Vicki and Karl Gumtow (SEAS BS '91 and '92) at the GW New Venture Competition Finals on April 20. The event is open to the public. More information .
Other Events
GW MAPsU Speaker Event: “Careers Beyond the Bench”
Speaker: Dr. Raleigh Malik
Thursday, April 13
5:30 – 6:30 pm
SEH, B1270
RSVP
Join us for a speaker event with Dr. Raleigh Malik, senior scientific liaison at the Drug Information Association (DIA). Dr. Malik received her Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Indiana University and will discuss the development of her career as a medical writer and how she used her Ph.D. to get to where she is today! Following Dr. Malik’s talk, please join our interest meeting, too. We are excited to move GWMAPsU forward to an official GW student organization. Come and bring us your feedback while enjoying some refreshments! More information
National Geographic Event: “Engineering for the Planet”
Presenter: Shah Selbe, rocket scientist and engineering activist
Wednesday, April 5
7:30 pm
National Geographic headquarters (1600 M Street, NW)
Student Tickets: $10 tickets using code NGEngineer10
Faculty Tickets: $5 discount using code Engineer5
Shah Selbe is a longstanding believer in the power of engineering and open-source data to solve the world's biggest problems. He has invented cutting-edge surveillance drones and sensors that are saving the environment—on land and in the ocean—from poachers and pollution.
Emerging Technologies Student Leaders Conference
Sunday-Wednesday, May 14-17
Gaylord National Convention Center, Washington, DC
The Student Leaders Conference brings together undergraduate nano and emerging technologies student group representatives from across the United States. It highlights undergraduate research and connects students with entrepreneurs, industry leaders, venture capitalists, and representatives of federal agencies funding research in emerging technologies. The conference is sponsored by TechConnect, in partnership with student groups from across the country. More information
Dissertation Defenses
Student Name: Mahesh Mohan
Dissertation Title: “Unsupervised Learning Algorithms for Graph Data”
Adviser: Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS)
Tuesday, April 11
11:00 am – 1:00 pm
SEH, 2000B