April 8-14, 2013

Newsletter

April 8, 2013

Faculty News

Research:

Prof. Murray Loew (ECE) has received a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Advanced Science and Technology award for 2013-2014.  He will work at the Australian Defence Science Technology Organisation in Adelaide to address the problem of how best to fuse information from multiple sensors, over time and space, with the goal of classifying objects and activities.  In addition to the collaborative research with DSTO, he will participate in a national tour with guest presentations at three or four institutions across Australia.  The research is expected to have application in defense, medicine, and industry.

Publications:

Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) has published the following paper: Snyder, M.R., Kang, H.S., Burks, J.S. and Brownell, C.J. "Validation of Ship Air Wake Simulations and Investigation of Ship Air Wake Impact on Rotary Wing Aircraft," Naval Engineers Journal, Volume 125, Number 1, March 2013, pp 69-79.

Conferences & Presentations:

Prof. Mona Diab (CS) has recently presented the following invited talks: 1) February 13--the University of Maryland Computer Science Department and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies; 2) March 11--Simon Frasier University Computer Science Department, Vancouver Canada; and 3) March 21--Mitre Corporation.  Prof. Diab also gave the keynote address at the Arabic Linguistic Symposium, held February 28 - March 2, at Indiana University.  The symposium is the premiere Arabic linguistics conference in the U.S.

Other News:

Prof. Chunlei Liang (MAE) is serving as a scientific committee member helping to organize a symposium celebrating the careers of Profs. Antony Jameson, Phil Roe, and Bram van Leer.  The symposium, titled "Four Decades of CFD: Looking Back and Moving Forward," is sponsored by AFOSR and will be held in June 2013 in San Diego, CA.

Student News

Congratulations to the 2013-2014 Clark Engineering Scholars : Adam Gray (CS), Dor Hirsch Bar Gai (EMSE), Elliot Liskin (CS), Samantha Starr (BME) , and Ian Wong (CEE) .  They were named last week by the Clark Scholars selection committee.  With the addition of this class of scholars, SEAS now has 17 Clark Scholars from across all five departments.

Congratulations to Jiaoyan (Jenny) Li and Damon Conover for winning first and second place, respectively, in the engineering category at last week’s GW Research Days competition.  Jiaoyan, an MAE doctoral student studying with Prof. James Lee , won first place for her research, “Multiple Length/Time Scale Modeling of Multi-physics for Nano/Micro Material Systems.”  Her research project also won first place in this year's SEAS Student Research and Development Showcase, which was held in February.  Damon, an ECE doctoral student studying with Prof. Murray Loew , won second place for his research, "Automatic Registration and Mosaicking of Conservation Images.”

Earl Crane, a recent EMSE Ph.D. graduate , is the subject of an article in the Carnegie Mellon newsletter that emphasizes the role he is taking in leading U.S. government cybersecurity efforts as the director for federal cybersecurity.   

Other News

Three teams from SEAS are among the eight teams selected to compete in the final round of the 2013 GW Business Plan competition, which will be held on Friday, April 19.  This year's competition started with 109 entries, was reduced to 33 in round 2, and now includes only eight.

Team 1: Graphene Plasma Technology
" Our novel graphene-based additive will dramatically reduce production costs in the reinforced plastics industry, offering environmental benefits and improved properties."

·         Luis Buitrago
·         Michael Keidar
·         Alexey Shashurin
·         John Donahue

Team mentor:  Randy Graves

Team 2: Revilex (Formerly Intellex Tech Labs LLC)

"Revilex provides a disaster/emergency management solution for data collection and analysis during hospital surge/mass care."

  • Meg Nash
  • Scott Nash

Team mentor:  Allen Herskowitz

Team 3: The SmartBrush

"Want to brush your teeth? There's an app for that! The SmartBrush is the first app-connected toothbrush that allows you to brush your teeth through interactive gaming all while providing the user with an optimal teeth cleaning experience."

  • Travis Gonzalez
  • Nikita Revenko
  • Sina Aghli
  • Genki Kondo

Team mentor:  Michael Spitalney

Guest Vignette

Multilateral arms control treaties such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) require the establishment and operation of global monitoring and verification systems to detect violations by the member states. These systems either monitor processes to detect diversion of materials from legitimate purposes to prohibited uses, as in the cases of the CWC and the NPT, or detect events, as in the case of the CTBT.

Detection of diversion requires a fairly accurate description of the process being monitored, a description of likely diversion scenarios, and specification of the process variables to be monitored contingent upon the likely diversion scenarios. Monitoring for detection of nuclear explosions requires global coverage by the sensor network and near-real time transmission and processing of the sensor data. Also, there are requirements for data availability and integrity, and system reliability. In addition, treaties include provisions for compliance.

Regardless of the specifics for each treaty, the model for monitoring, verification and compliance enforcement is that of a feedback control system. Due to the nature of international negotiations and the decision-making processes for concluding a treaty, neither the processes to be monitored nor the measurement systems nor the decision-making mechanisms are specified completely. As a result, uncertainties enter into the detection process. The objective of designing such systems is to maximize the detection probability. The focus of my work for more than 25 years has been on the design and evaluation of performance of global monitoring systems and the development of models for incompletely specified complex processes with parametric uncertainty.   (Provided courtesy of Prof. Nicholas Kyriakopoulos of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering)

SEAS Events

GW Mathematica Seminar
Monday, April 8
2:00 – 3:00 pm (includes Q&A)
736 Phillips Hall

MAE and Center for Biomimetics & Bioinspired Engineering Seminar: "Addressing Soft Robotic Challenge With Robogamis"
Dr. Jamie Paik, Swiss NCCR Robotics Group
Tuesday, April 9
3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

SEAS Faculty Research and Teaching Awards Presentation
Thursday, April 11
3:00 - 5:00 pm
407 Marvin Center|
All SEAS faculty, staff, and students are welcome to attend

ECE Colloquium: “Developing mm-Scale High-Efficiency Power Converters”
Dr. Sarah S. Bedair
Friday, April 12
2:00 pm
352 Rome Hall

MAE Seminar: “Highly-Dynamic Legged Locomotion through Nonlinear Control”
Koushil Sreenath, postdoctoral researcher, University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, April 16
3:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

2013 Frank Howard Distinguished Lecture: "Promoting Cutting Edge Research: The Impact of the U.S. Navy"
Speaker: Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research
Wednesday, April 17
6:15 - 9:00 pm
103 Funger Hall
As the Chief of Naval Research, RADM Klunder coordinates, executes and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, distributing approximately $2 billion in funds annually .

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.

Entrepreneurship Events

2013 GW Business Plan Competition Finals
Friday, April 19
9:00 am – 6:30 pm
Duques Hall, 6th Floor

Dissertation Defenses

Name of Student Defending: Sylvain A. Motycka
Title of Dissertation: “Techno-Economic analysis of a plasma gasification biomass to liquid plant”
Advisor: Prof. Michael Duffey
Wednesday, April 10
10:00 am
1776 G Street, Conference Room 120