Faculty News
Awards & Honors:
Prof. Roger Lang (ECE) has been awarded the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society’s Distinguished Achievement Award. This award honors individuals who have made significant technical contributions over a sustained period of time. The award is considered annually and presented if a distinguished candidate is identified.
Research:
Prof. Michael Keidar (MAE) has received a grant with a budget of $60,000 from GW’s Katzen Cancer Research Center. The PI on the grant is Dr. Jonathan Sherman (Neurosurgery, MFA), and Prof. Keidar is the co-PI. The project title is “Cold Atmospheric Plasma in the Treatment of Malignant Glioma.”
Prof. Kausik Sarkar (MAE) received a 2013 University Facilitating Fund research award of $20,000 for his proposal “Controlling Cancer Cell Proliferation Using Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound.” Under this proposal he will investigate inhibitive effects of ultrasound on cancer cell proliferation and migration.
On March 19, U.S. Patent #8,400,697, "Scanner apparatus having electromagnetic radiation devices coupled to MEMS actuators," was issued to Prof. Jason Zara (ECE) and his former collaborators from Duke University and UNC-Charlotte.
Publications:
Prof. Ergun Simsek (ECE) has had the following manuscript published: E. Simsek, "A Closed-Form Approximate Expression for the Optical Conductivity of Graphene," Optics Letters, Vol. 38, No. 9, pp. 1437-1439, May 2013. doi: 10.1364/OL.38.001437
Prof. Wasyl Wasylkiwskyj’s (ECE) book, Signals and Transforms in Linear Systems Analysis, has just been published by Springer.
Conferences & Presentations:
Prof. Michael Plesniak (MAE chair) presented an invited seminar titled "Human Phonation: Fluid Dynamics of the Vocal Tract" as part of the Distinguished Leaders in Engineering series, held on April 24 in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Prof. Julie Ryan (EMSE) participated in the College of Southern Maryland’s annual Women & Math day by leading a workshop on cybersecurity and cryptography. Held April 20, this was the ninth occurrence of an interactive day-long event designed to encourage young women aged 13 and up to become interested in studying science, technology, engineering, and math.
Other News:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) sponsored and mentored the School Without Walls High School FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics team this year, with the dedicated assistance of some of his graduate students, including William Rone, Jeff Phillips, Wael Saab, Bohua Zhang, Yue Sun and Sina Aghli. The FIRST Robotics Competition is an international robotics competition in which high school students team up to build robots to complete a different task each year. The School Without Walls Mighty Penguins participated in the Washington, DC FIRST Regional, which took place March 28-30. Prof. Ben-Tzvi and his students assisted the team with this year’s challenge, which involved the design, integration, and programming of a robot capable of both shooting frisbees into targets of varying heights, and climbing a pyramid constructed of metal piping.
Prof. Rumana Riffat (CEE and associate dean for academic affairs) was an invited judge at the National Sustainable Design Expo, held April 18-19 on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The Expo showcased approximately 50 student projects from various universities and organizations competing for the EPA P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) award, as well as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Sustainable Development award. Prof. Riffat served as a judge for the ASCE award, which recognized the student teams whose projects solve a pressing need (e.g. water, sanitation, or air quality) in a developing country.
Other News
EMSE alumnus and SEAS Hall of Famer Mario Cardullo successfully defended his dissertation at George Mason University on April 18. His dissertation title is "Development of Information and Knowledge Architectures and an Associated Framework and Methodology for System Management of a Global Reserve Currency." Mario Cardullo is an excellent example of the “life-long” learning culture that SEAS hopes to instill in its alumni. When he receives his doctoral degree in May, he will be 78 years old.
Guest Vignette
As an outreach to local high school students, the “Traffic and Networks Research Laboratory” recently organized a field trip for the advanced physics students of the School Without Walls. Different transportation safety concepts were presented to the audience, who visited the driving simulator laboratory (CISR), the traffic simulation laboratory (CISR), the truck simulator laboratory (CISR), and the vehicle modeling laboratory (NCAC). Master’s degree students Lingqiao Qin and Sanaz Zehtabi and doctoral student Sean Haight interacted with the guests while giving two modular lectures on pre-crash and post-crash traffic models. This outreach activity was funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF) award “Collaborative Research: New Methods for Measuring, Evaluating and Predicting the Safety Impact of Road Infrastructure Systems on Driver Behavior.” (Provided courtesy of Prof. Samer Hamdar of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering)
SEAS Events
MAE Seminar: “Mechanobiology of Atherosclerosis and Arterial Hypertension”
Speaker: Dr. Heather N. Hayenga, University of Maryland and Texas A&M University
Tuesday, April 30
3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
CS Seminar: “Self-Manipulation and Dynamic Transitions for a Legged Robot”
Speaker: Aaron Johnson, University of Pennsylvania
Wednesday, May 1
11:00 am
205 Tompkins
CS Colloquium: “From Sorcery to Science: How Hollywood Physics Advances Computational Engineering”
Speaker: Dr. Eitan Grinspun, Columbia University
Wednesday, May 1
2:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall
CEE Senior Design Showcase and CEE Advisory Board Day
Distinguished Speaker: Ronaldo Nicholson, Chief Engineer, Infrastructure Project Management
Administration, District Department of Transportation
Wednesday, May 1
4:00 – 6:00 pm
405 Marvin Center
Symposium on Biomedical Engineering and Computing
Thursday, May 2
Marvin Center, Continental Ballroom
The Symposium on Biomedical Engineering and Computing will showcase the best in interdisciplinary research going on at GW in engineering, science, and medicine focused on biomedical engineering and biomedical computing.
MAE Seminar: “Multiscale Considerations in DNS Studies of Multiphase Flows”
Speaker: Dr. Gretar Tryggvason, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, The University of Notre Dame
Monday, May 6
2:00 pm
771 Rome Hall
Graduation Events
Thursday, May 16
Doctoral Hooding Ceremony
5:00 pm
Charles E. Smith Center
Friday, May 17
School of Engineering and Applied Science Reception
4:30 pm
Marvin Center Ballrooms
School of Engineering and Applied Science Celebration
7:30 pm
Charles E. Smith Center
Sunday, May 19
Processions step off at the National Mall
9:30 am
National Mall
University Commencement
10:00 am
National Mall, between 8th and 14th Streets