Faculty News
Honors & Awards:
Prof. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE) formally received the Humboldt Research Award from the president of the Humobldt Foundation at the Foundation’s annual awards ceremony, held March 20-23, in Bamberg, Germany. Fifty-four scientists from around the world were recognized at the ceremony.
Prof. Kennerly Digges (CEE research professor and director of vehicle safety and biomechanics at the National Crash Analysis Center) was inducted as a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) at the SAE National Congress, held April 8-10, in Detroit, MI. The citation listed outstanding accomplishments in automotive safety, including the development of new car assessment programs, research to reduce vehicle fire risk, and improvements in side impact protection and automatic crash notification. Prof. Digges was nominated for SAE Fellowship by Prof. Clay Gabler of Virginia Tech.
Research:
Prof. Zhenyu Li (ECE) and his collaborators, Prof. Robert Hawley (Department of Anatomy & Regenerative Biology) and Prof. Imad Tabbara (MFA), have been awarded a $65,000 Katzen Foundation Innovative Cancer Research Pilot Grant for their project, “Microfluidic Devices for Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Myeloma.”
Publications:
“Dual-pump CARS of Air in a Heated Pressure Vessel up to 55 Bar and 1300 K,” a paper co-authored by Prof. Andrew Cutler (MAE) and his doctoral students Luca Cantu and Emanuela Gallo, has won the AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Best Paper award. The paper will be presented at the June 17 awards luncheon in conjunction with the AIAA Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and Exposition in Atlanta, GA. The paper citation is: L.M.L. Cantu, E.C.A. Gallo, A.D. Cutler, and P.M. Danehy. “Dual-pump CARS of Air in a Heated Pressure Vessel up to 55 Bar and 1300 K,” AIAA-2014-1098, 52nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting, National Harbor, MD, January 13-17, 2014.
Prof. Zhenyu Li (ECE) and his collaborators at Washington University at St. Louis have published the following paper: X. Xu, Z.Y. Li, P. Sarder, N. Kotagiri, and A. Nehorai, “Simultaneous detection of multiple targets using optimized microfluidic microsphere-trap arrays,” Journal of Micro/Nanolithography. MEMS MOEMS. 13(1), 013017, March 26, 2014.
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) has been invited to participate as a member of the Technical Program Committee for the 2014IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, to be held in China in August.
Other News:
On March 21, SEAS 6100: Innovation and Technology students learned design-thinking and rapid-prototyping strategies at MIT’s DC Fablab. Prof. Volker Sorger (ECE), the course founder, arranged the workshop. Design-thinking is a strategy that employs creativity, human values, and hands-on-thinking to generate insights that can be used in lean development and rapid engineering. It originated from Tom Kelley’s IDEO company in Silicon Valley.
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE), Alex Shashurin (MAE research scientist), and SEAS alumnus Randy Graves (D.Sc. ’78) appear in a recently produced video commercial for the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. The three formed the Graphene Team and participated in the I-Corps program in the summer of 2012. Look for their brief appearances in the video,What is I-Corps?
Staff News
On April 16, Mr. Howard Davis (director, Office of Undergraduate Student Services, Advising and Records) received the GW Wall of Fame award for his service to the GW community.
Student News
Evan Kaufman (MAE doctoral student) has been accepted into the Space Scholars Program in the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) for eight weeks this summer. The program takes place at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM, and the research focus is data association for space object tracking and change detection. Evan researches under the advising of Prof. Taeyoung Lee (MAE) and will research under the mentorship of T. Alan Lovell during the summer program.
Guest Vignette
Researchers in the Department of Computer Science are working to build a novel privacy-preserving framework with both new algorithms and software tools to: 1) evaluate the effectiveness of current identifier-suppression techniques for Electronic Healthcare Record
(EHR) data; and 2) de-identify and anonymize EHR data to protect personal information without significantly reducing the utility of data for secondary data analysis.
The transition from paper records to EHRs has accelerated significantly since the passage of the HITECH Act of 2009. The Act provides monetary incentives for the “meaningful use” of EHRs. As a result, the quality and quantity of healthcare databases has risen sharply, which has renewed the public's fear of a breach of privacy of their medical information. A research group led by Prof. Nan Zhang, in collaboration with the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of North Texas Health Service Center, demonstrated that, even with regard to health data that meets HIPAA requirements, the risk of re-identification cannot be completely eliminated. To address this concern, they are working on developing a new privacy-preserving framework that injects ICD-9-CM-aware constraint-based privacy-preserving techniques into EHRs to eliminate the threat of identifying an individual in the secondary use of research data. This research has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation. (Provided courtesy of Professor Nan Zhang of the Department of Computer Science)
SEAS Events
MAE Seminar: “Engineering Healthy Heart”
Speaker: Prof. Igor R. Efimov, Washington University in St. Louis
Tuesday, April 22
1:30 pm
115 Smith Hall 115
MAE Seminar: “On the Damping-Induced Self-Recovery Phenomenon in Mechanical Systems”
Speaker: Prof. Dong Eui Chang, The University of Waterloo, Canada
Tuesday, April 22
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: “Optimal Control of Wireless Networks: From Theory to Practice”
Speaker: Dr. Eytan Modiano, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Wednesday, April 23
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
CEE Seminar: “Environmentally Relevant Properties of Polymer Carbon Nanotube-Nanocomposites”
Speaker: Dr. Howard Fairbrother, Johns Hopkins University
Friday, April 25
12:00 – 1:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “A Strategy for Assessing the Credibility of Models and Simulations for Regulatory Decision Making”
Speaker: Dr. Tina M. Morrison, Advisor of Computational Modeling, Center for Devices & Radiological Health, Food and Drug Administration
Monday, April 28
2:00 pm
771 Rome Hall
Software Carpentry Bootcamp
Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29 and 30
Virginia Science and Technology Campus
More info and registration
Software Carpentry Bootcamp, a two-day intensive hands-on program for scientists and engineers, is sponsored by the GW Institute for Massively Parallel Applications and Computing Technologies (IMPACT) and will be hosted by Profs. Lorena Barba and Tarek El-Ghazawi. Software Carpentry's mission is to help scientists and engineers become more productive by teaching them basic lab skills for computing, such as program design, version control, data management, and task automation.
MAE Seminar: “Hydrodynamic Ship Design Optimization Considering Uncertainty”
Speaker: Dr. Emilio Campana, CNR–INSEAN National Research Council of Italy – Marine Technology Research Institute
Thursday, May 1
2:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
ECE Colloquium: “Coordinated Task Management and Scheduling for MapReduce”
Speaker: Prof. Weikuan Yu, Auburn University
Friday, May 2
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Nanogenerators as New Energy Technology & Piezotronics for Functional Systems”
Speaker: Dr. Zhong Lin Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology
Thursday, May 8
11:00 am
736 Phillips Hall
SAVE THE DATE: Pelton Senior Design Competition & Senior-Alumni BBQ
Wednesday, May 14
5:00 – 9:00 pm
Marvin Center Grand Ballroom
Registration required
MAE Seminar: “Basic Research in Spacecraft Actuator Control Allocation & Parameter Identification”
Speaker: Dr. Frederick Aaron Leve, Research Aerospace Engineer Guidance, Navigation, & Controls Group, The Air Force Research Laboratory/Space Vehicles Directorate
Thursday, May 15
11:00 am
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Microfluidics Assisted Bio- and Nano-materials Synthesis”
Speaker: Prof. Amy Shen, University of Washington
Monday, May 19
1:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
MAE Seminar: “Geometry of Collectives: Control, Dynamics, and Reconstruction”
Speaker: Dr. P. S. Krishnaprasad, University of Maryland College Park, Institute of Systems Research
Thursday, May 22
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
Other GW Events:
Entrepreneur Office Hour
Thursday, April 24
1:30 – 2:30pm
2033 K St NW, Suite 750
RSVP
Security Awareness Series: Compliance and Risk Management - A University Perspective
Wednesday, April 30: Foggy Bottom Campus
Thursday, May 1: Ashburn Campus
A GW Infomail will be sent out later this month with more information and an RSVP link.
External Events:
USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo
Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27
Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
More info
Over 750 leading STEM organizations will present hands-on science and engineering activities for people of all ages. The event is free of charge.
Dissertation Defenses:
Name of Student Defending: Kumar Jeev
Title of Dissertation: “Dynamic Interaction between Cap and Trade and Electricity Markets”
Advisor: Michael Duffey (EMSE)
Tuesday, April 29
1:00 pm
1776 G Street, Conference Room 120
The Rubik's Cube is the most popular twisty puzzle. Learn to solve a Rubiks Cube with this easy tutorial.