Faculty News
Honors and Awards:
MAE doctoral student Gaetano Magnotti and his advisor, Prof. Andrew Cutler (MAE), were notified on April 24 that the AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Technical Committee has named their technical paper, "Development of a Dual-Pump CARS System for Measurements in a Supersonic Combusting Free Jet" (AIAA Paper No. AIAA 2012-1193), the 2012 AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Best Paper.
Media Mentions:
Prof. Lance Hoffman (CS) was featured in a CNN piece on the need for cybersecurity specialists, which aired the weekend of April 21.
Conferences and Presentations:
Prof. Pinhas Ben-Tzvi (MAE) his doctoral student Paul Moubarak, and Danielle Barsky, who is an undergraduate researcher in his lab, presented and published a proceedings paper in collaboration with Prof. Mona Zaghloul (ECE chair). The paper citation is: Moubarak, P., Barsky, D., Ben-Tzvi, P., and Zaghloul, M., "A Self-Calibrating Temperature Independent Model of a Bi-Axial Piezoelectric MEMS Tilt Sensor," Proceedings of SPIE - Defense, Security, and Sensing, Micro-and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications IV Conference, Vol. 8373, 8373-93, Baltimore, MD, April 23-27, 2012.
On April 18, Prof. Azim Eskandarian (CEE) delivered an invited talk, "Vehicle Active Safety Systems for Collision Avoidance," at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) and the Automotive Engineering Department. In attendance were faculty and students from CU-ICAR, Clemson's Automotive Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Departments and industry. CU-ICAR is ranked in the Top 10 automotive colleges and universities in the U.S.
On April 27, Prof. Claire Monteleoni (CS) gave an invited talk, "Clustering Algorithms for Streaming and Online Settings," to the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, National Capital Region.
Prof. Gabriel Sibley (CS) gave a robotics and intelligent machines seminar at Georgia Tech on April 23. His talk described recent advances in perception that enable long-term autonomous operation of mobile robots in novel environments.
Other News:
Prof. Tarek El-Ghazawi (ECE) has been named an IBM Research Faculty Fellow for 2012. In addition, IBM has a made a $28,000 cash gift to his lab for his work on applying heterogeneous high-performance computing for online analytical processing (OLAP) for business intelligence. This is the second year in the row that IBM has made contributions to Prof. El-Ghazawi's high-performance computing lab. Separately, Prof. El-Ghazawi also received a $70,000 cash gift from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to support his work on optimizing multicore smart device architectures for cloud computing. AMD is one of the largest microprocessor manufacturers in the world. This is the second year in the row that AMD, too, has made such a commitment.
Student News
SEAS sophomore Will Broman (biomedical engineering) has published another op-ed article on the U.S. News and World Report STEM education website. His article, "Success at Entrepreneur Contests Shows Market Value of STEM," appeared on April 26.
Three SEAS students took the first, second, and third place prizes on April 26 at the SSPI Mid-Atlantic Regional Chapter's Second Annual Engineering Student Project Competition on Space Systems. The competition includes student projects from GW and George Mason University. Brenton Duffy received First Place for "Elliptic Restricted Three-Body Problem;" Danielle Barsky received Second Place for "Examination of the Plateau-Rayleigh Instability in Columns of Fluids in a Microgravity Environment;" and Mazdak Taghioskoui received Third Place for "Ambient Ionization for Methane Quantification in Simulated Martian Atmosphere Using Miniature Inductively Coupled Plasmas."
The GW Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers participated in the 2012 ASCE Virginia conference, March 28-31. During the conference, the GW steel bridge team, consisting of six CEE undergraduates (Michele Lockhart, Anna Weiser-Woodward, Christopher Allison, Andrew Vasko, Raminder Singh, and Miles Milliken), competed with seven other teams from the District of Columbia and the State of Virginia. The GW team won first place in two key categories: efficiency and stiffness.
At its April 10 annual banquet, the National Capital Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers honored three civil and environmental engineering undergraduates from GW. Anna Weiser-Woodward was recognized as the GW outstanding graduating senior, while CEE juniors Andrew Vasko and Molly Olsen received the ASCE-NCS scholarships.
Thank you to Maddy Brannon for organizing student volunteers to man the SEAS booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 28. Maddy and her classmate Chris Allison spent the entire day at the Washington Convention Center greeting guests at the booth, talking to high school students, and making paper airplanes with grade school students. SEAS also thanks the student volunteers who helped with the activities: Kati Peditto, Brent Duffy, Rhiannon Scanlon, Adeday Jobi-Odeneye, Chelsea Willoughby, Rachel Jeong, Amit Paul, Alexa Baumer, Rachel Chen, Joe Ghen, Jiaxun Liu, Lisa Pan, Ryan Mossborger, Emily Alexander, Jess Greulich, Kelli Noel, and Alyse Stone.
Guest Vignette
2008 Environmental and Energy Management (EEM) graduate Kristin Deason is playing a leadership role in the German renewable energy movement. A recent issue of the EEM newsletter details Kristin's activities and efforts as manager for international cooperation in a German renewable energy research company. To learn more about Kristin's activities, please see the EEM newsletter. (Provided courtesy of Prof. Julie Ryan, chair of the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering)
SEAS Events
Order of the Engineer Ceremony
Tuesday, May 15
4:00 - 6:00 pm
402 Marvin Center
Pelton Senior Design Competition and Senior/Alumni BBQ
Wednesday, May 16
5:00 - 8:30 pm
Marvin Center Grand Ballroom and Terrace
CEE Seminar: "Vehicle Dynamics and Safety Research at Coventry University"
Dr. Mike Blundell, Coventry University, UK
Wednesday, May 17
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
Save the Date: SEAS Graduation Celebration
Friday, May 18
7:30 pm
Smith Center (a reception in the Marvin Center Ballrooms precedes the event)
Dissertation Defenses
Name of Student Defending: Hong Quach
Title of Dissertation: "A Correlation Study Between Organizational Trust and Communication Effectiveness in Selected Workplaces"
Advisor: Prof. Michael Stankosky
Thursday, May 3
2:00 pm
1776 G Street, Suite 101, Room 142
Name of Student Defending: Ritu Bajpai
Title of Dissertation: "UV-assisted Alcohol Sensors Using GaN Nanowires Functionalized with ZnO and SnO2 Nanoparticles"
Advisor: Prof. Mona Zaghloul
Friday, May 4
12:00 pm
640 Phillips Hall
Name of Student Defending: Michel S. Pawlowski
Title of Dissertation: "Catastrophic Events - Emergency Management Requirements For Catastrophic Response Operations"
Advisor: Prof. Greg Shaw
Tuesday, May 8
10:00 am
1776 G Street, Conference Room 120